Why gouache is the ideal paint for beginners

Have you always wanted to start painting but don’t know where to begin? I get it. There are so many types of paint to choose from. While it’s okay to start with any paint that you like, I just find gouache to be the most beginner-friendly one.

What is gouache?

If you’re hearing gouache for the first time, it’s understandable. Gouache isn’t as famous as acrylic, watercolour, or oil. But if you scroll through art videos on Instagram of TikTok, you’ll see that a lot of artists are actually using it.

The most common gouache brand is Miya Himi. You’ve probably seen those mesmerizing unboxing videos where they peel off the foil cover of several small tubs of paint and drop them back into the plastic case one by one.

Gouache is a type of water-based paint. It’s technically watercolour with an added ingredient like gum or opaque white pigment to make the finished product look less transparent like watercolour and more opaque like acrylic.

Like watercolour, you use water to adjust the consistency of gouache paint. The main difference is that even after gouache has dried on your paper, you can reactivate it with water – meaning, you can still blend it with another colour. Be careful though, you might not want to do it on purpose.

What makes gouache beginner-friendly?

I started painting with watercolour but looking back, I hope I started with gouache so I didn’t have to be so frustrated with the difficulty of watercolour. Here’s why I think it’s more ideal for beginners:

• You don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to use gouache. You can paint straight away without worrying about the paint drying too quickly (like acrylic) or about having used too much water that would destroy your painting (watercolour) or about waiting too long for the paint to dry on your paper (oil).
• You don’t need the highest quality watercolour paper to paint on. Student grade papers would work just fine. It also works fine on cold or hot pressed paper, and even on smooth mixed media paper.
• You don’t need the finest brushes to paint with. Student grade watercolour or acrylic brushes will do, too.
• You can keep on layering dark on light or light on dark as long as you manage the thickness of the paint you use on each layer. Start with thinner consistency if you plan to do multiple layers.

What can you paint with gouache?

You can paint all kinds of subjects with gouache – landscapes, food, and everyday objects. You can achieve paintings that look like they were painted with acrylic or oil depending on the style you adopt.

But gouache is famously used by artists to paint animé scenes, especially those from Studio Ghibli. It’s the ideal paint to use if you want to recreate those vivid and opaque animé-style illustrations. You can easily draw over it with a pen, too, once you need to add those black outlines to finish off the whole animé look.

You can also use it for leisurely paintings on your sketchbook and combine it with coloured pencils or crayons.

If gouache got you hooked now, we have a gouache painting workshop you can join to start exploring this medium. Learn how to paint The Grinch or the adorable Tata from BT21 using this beginner-friendly paint.