Upset and delighted

Y’all! I just got new paints. It’s gouache this time. It is a very opaque watercolor (to an extent). Historically, traditional gouache had white chalk added to it. I would love to show pictures, but you can find them on Google Arts and Culture.

Nowadays, gouache is densely packed pigment and binder with pigments that are more opaque. Typically this binder is gum Arabic and something to help it from molding in a tube. My watercolors I made at home are varieties of opacities, but typically are semi opaque and opaque.

The gouache I received was a Holbein gouache set with a twelve colors. It is majority of the colors in the conventional rainbow but very, very…bright. In fact, they’re too bright for me. Aggressively bright. I normally don’t like bright colors in my art even though I either wear neon colors or heavily saturated shirts. 😂

The thing is, they’re a great investment. I like how they work even though I’m trash at them for right now because it’ll make me have more depth into my style. They’re absolutely delightful after the swatches and the failed painting I will mention later. (it’s not failed, I just don’t like it and have to paint over it with a different medium like acrylic gouache (which is thin, but chunky acrylics that can be easily watered down. Their binder is a polymer instead of gum Arabic. Gum Arabic is rewettable or soluble, but acrylic polymer, once it dries, it’s dry. It is not rewettable. Anyway, this painting still has potential.)

Holbein has a ton of pigments on here that aren’t very lightfast and some aren’t single pigments either, but it doesn’t mean that they’re bad. They just aren’t single pigments. I refused to thin them down because I’m hardheaded and tried to paint and it looked too rendered and greasy. Personally, I don’t like greasy art. As well, I am not used to this level of opacity! I love opacity, but I was shocked because these were thick, rewet thick, and went down thick and got stuck in my synthetic brushes. I didn’t like that. It made the picture muddy.

Anywho, the upset part was drawing a character that I did with Holbein’s acryla gouache—aka Vivian. I tried painting him, but the palette was very bright and his skin tone and oil-painting skin tone were hard to replicate and add nuance (or I just suck right now and need to approach this differently. )

As well, I struggled badly with drawing him in the first place. I have no idea how I did his design—he’s based off of faces of very popular and renowned artists of the Renaissance—but I think I might have to change it. It something that I hate doing, but what’s the point if he looks vastly different on each picture…I don’t like that.🥲

I’m mad too because they didn’t have an orange…purple, orange, and greens are my soft spots on my palettes and these reds are weak sauce . If they don’t look like blood or dried blood (not an edgy //_. way, but I love dark reds) I struggle with it.

I want a bright orange though. Bright oranges and yellows are great!😋

Overall, I love the flatness of these gouaches and I can wait to make successful art. Anywho, I will be posting pictures of the failed painting when I get back over to that table. 😬 Laugb with me, y’all.

Anywho, I also want to talk about other stuff since I’m here.

I’ve been having bad art days recently because I’ve been pushing myself and also was in interesting health. I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. A lot is going on. I just struggle.

Also, I just wonder if I need to make a change with the way I do things with my art to make it less intimidating and not as mentally exhausting to do. I get scared trying to draw. I struggle with bodies and poses. It’s very hard for me to bodies in general because gender dysphoria and feeling bad makes me jealous of some people’s bodies and other stuff ruin my life.

I also am getting the vibe that my art leans very feminine to y’all and while I’m not going to change that, it does make me wonder about a lot of things about the perception.

It’s like, being in a room and drawing people you understand and leaving that room and people see it differently and while it’s not bad at all, you wonder why and how?

How does someone have a style that is so undeniably feminine? Probably the female gaze. (Not a counter towards the male gaze, the female gaze is mostly nonpolitical 😒and is just about what women—typically heterosexual women want.) Growing up, in a lot of my spaces, unless the person was into anime, they didn’t draw men that often. They’d draw girls. I had male ocs that I liked drawing and enjoyed, but guess what?

They’re all visible to outsiders as women. Undeniably. They don’t look masculine at all. Even when I try, it just isn’t as fun and people have a lot more to say when it’s not manly enough than everyone looking the same.

Anywho, thank you for talking to me. I appreciate it. Stay healthy and hydrated.