Learning Gouache with Ellen Langford

Example of Gouache on Paper

Cost: $150. Registration link coming soon.       

Description:

This workshop for adults and older teens will be held inside the museum and en plein air.

Learn techniques of painting in gouache, an ancient opaque watercolor medium with artist Ellen Langford. Ellen has painted in gouache from the Isle of Wight to Horn Island and the entire length of the Appalachian trail from Georgia to Maine. It’s a great medium for travel or home. Toulose LaTrec painted in Gouache at the famous nightclub, Moulin Rouge.

Supply List:

• M.Graham brand (available through Amazon), Windsor Newton, or others, just don’t get “acrylic gouache”.
  • These four colors make up the “Zorn” palette, with which you can do so much: Titanium white Mars Black cadmium red light yellow ochre
  • You can also supplement with others, like ultramarine blue, naphthalene red, sap green, cadmium yellow.
  • For more traditional earthy colors - burnt sienna, burnt umber.
• Brushes
  • Travel brushes: https://a.co/d/2PiR6tx
  • A “bright” which is a flat brush for getting good edges and filling larger space (1/2 inch to 3/4inch)
• A small bottle for clean water
• Small jar or empty aluminum can for your paint water
• Pencil (for class just a #2 is fine. In art pencils Ellen prefers softer - 3B)
• Kneaded eraser
• Small plastic sandwich container (for palette)
• Paper - mixed media pad
• Tinted illustration board optional

Optional:

• Paper towels
• Blue painters tape
• Spray bottle

Ellen suggests watching this artist for gouache tips: https://youtu.be/IQDyBO_Jucg

ABOUT ELLEN LANGFORD:

Ellen Langford is a painter whose body of work is inspired by landscapes, chance meetings, and the South’s mighty cross-currents. Ellen notices and captures the relationships between the land and its inhabitants – a child with his dog, a clothesline in the breeze, a figure with the landscape. We don’t only see them in her paintings, we feel that joyful connection.

Langford worked for years as a paramedic in central Mississippi. She became heavily influenced by the often tender narratives of her patients’ stories, as well as the quiet rituals that they incorporate into their lives. As the parent of a young boy herself, and owner of chickens and dogs, Ellen often incorporates children and animals into her compositions as she finds sweetness and vulnerability in their movements, as well as joy and adventure.

Native to Mississippi, Ellen has pursued academic studies in her craft in New York, San Francisco, DC, and Italy, among other places. However, her work took on its recognizable narrative quality when she returned to her home in the Deep South.

Langford’s painting process involves layers of paint, often sanded away and then glazed over, searching for shape and pattern, color, and texture, to build the story worlds her figures inhabit. 

Bio courtesy of Betsy-Rose Weiss of the American Folk Art Gallery in Asheville, NC.

EXAMPLES OF GOUACHE ON PAPER