Water reflections are wonderful to paint, and gouache—which combines the best traits of watercolors and oils—is perfect for them.
By Xiaogang Zhu
One of my favorite painting subjects is reflections on water. They're a unique challenge because of the fascinating colors and patterns that result from combination of sunlight, reflected objects and the water's surface, and I’ve found this requires great flexibility in layering colors.The transparency of traditional watercolors and the long drying time of oils can make this challenge difficult to meet in those media, but gouache has everything you need.
I learned to paint with gouache in China in the early 1970s, and at that time most artists used it in a very wet and thin style, almost like watercolor techniques. But a few artists and teachers took advantage of the opaque quality of gouache, making the medium stand apart from traditional watercolors and creating the look that appealed to me most. For more than 25 years now, I’ve used French Impressionist and Russian Realist oil painting techniques as models for developing my own style of work in gouache, and painting reflections is a good example of why it works so well.
Complexity Made Easy
The visual impression of water consists of both the surface of the water and the object reflected. Generally, the reflection is vertical while the surface texture looks horizontal. The colors of reflections are determined by what’s reflected, but many factors modify both the color and…
The Opaque Advantage
One of my favorite gouache techniques is putting light, bright color on top of dark, muted color. In the foreground of Old Brewery (gouache, 14x20), I added ripples of blue sky and building reflections over darker tree reflections.
Have it Your Way
To get just the right reflections for Harborview (gouache, 20x30). I used a juicy mixture with a hard brush to create some hard-edged cross liners and a dry mixture with a soft brush to create ripples with soft edges.
