Painting Lines and Shapes in Gouache

Painting Lines & Shapes in Gouache by Larissa Yeung Fung

I love using gouache and I think it’s the perfect medium to do mindful painting. In this tutorial, you will learn the process of painting shapes first and then adding lines on top using gouache. It’s a good way to practice controlling the brush to paint fine details.

Painting lines & shapes in gouache tutorial | the challenge

Step 1

Sketch shapes in pencil on paper. I drew a range of rectangles in here, but feel free to draw other shapes in your work.

Painting lines & shapes in gouache tutorial | step 1

Step 2

Paint the shapes using gouache. I suggest you use no more than eight colors in this exercise.

Painting lines & shapes in gouache tutorial | step 2

Step 3

Paint line patterns on the shapes. Here I used a combination of long and short lines in the patterns. You may choose to paint different types of lines in your work.

Painting lines & shapes in gouache tutorial | step 3

You will see me struggling a bit when I started to paint the lines but I eventually got better at it. If you experienced the same thing when you paint, if you think what you just painted didn’t turn out the way you want, please don’t feel discouraged. Ignore the imperfections and power through. You will see yourself getting better at painting details.

Enjoy the tutorial and see if you could paint different kinds of lines and shapes using gouache.

Happy creating!