Moleskine Gouaches

I bought a watercolor Moleskin sketchbook last year and, oddly enough, I've used just about every major media in it except watercolor. I just started using gouache. I've been using white gouache in my brown sketchbook for a long time now but hadn't expanded to color so I bought some cheapass basic set from Michael's a couple months ago. I'm still adjusting to how gouache behaves, how much darker it dries, how fast it dries, and how to deal with the lousy pigments in the cheap brand I bought. I know for sure I like gouache now, so I'll upgrade to real paints soon. Anyhow, I kinda like how a few of the paint sketches turned out:


Location: Graveyard next to Mission San Jose, Fremont, California. I like this one a lot, actually. I think I should've simplified the foliage, though. Wierd story, there's a church on the other side of the graveyard separated only by chain link fence. I was sitting in the graveyard when Sunday services let out and the people all tried to get their cars out of this tiny parking lot. No one wanted to wait for anyone else to pull out of their spaces first. Soon it was a huge mess and people were getting out of their cars all over the place to yell at each other. One purple-faced old man in particular baited a young father out of his van, argued for several minutes, and then blustered, "Why don't you be God-like, you idiot!" On Father's Day.

Location: Alcatraz, San Francisco, CA.

Location: Central Park/Lake Elizabeth, Fremont, CA.

Location: Chinatown, San Francisco, CA. Wierd little color sketch of an alley in Chinatown. It was high noon and I couldn't see a damn thing from all the sun where I was sitting, thus the awful values. I'm surprised how interesting the colors turned out and it's kind of a cool image, so blog it goes.

It took me so many years to realize that "gouache" is not pronounced like "gauche". Refined, yeah?