Attitudes

Ever wonder where our attitudes come from?  Ever wonder if maybe it's time to give them a spring cleaning?

Somewhere along the way, I acquired an attitude about gouache, that the medium was not suitable for much beyond poster design and underpainting for pastels.  And it stuck.  But yesterday morning that attitude got smashed for all it was worth when it occurred to me that if I wanted to chase the rapid changes of light and color happening every morning in our woods, I needed something I didn't have to pamper (so watercolor was out) or that wouldn't get muddy with rapid changes of mixes (so oil was out) and that I could work back into (so acrylic was out) and that I could grab in a hurry and jump right into. 

And then I remembered gouache (thanks, Dale).  Not to bore you with sequential details, I found myself with a quickly thrown together set of tools and a brush moving around colors, discovering something of what the early morning mist and sunlight were doing in front of my eyes.  It took a while to get reacquainted with the stuff and the light was so dim on the porch I couldn't really see the palette, but I ended up with two little studies (left and middle here):

Quick Studies   Gouache on Paper

Then this morning, I did the one on the right from the deck.  I chased one change after another for nearly an hour.

So gouache--a medium which I had discounted based on attitude rather than fact--has become for me another opened door.

Enjoy your Thursday.
Dianne