It is interesting that this question popped up,,I have been thinking about gouache lately…I have not painted with any opaque medium Except pastel in my chalk drawing days in the 80s,,,I was thinking gouache would be a good introduction to opaque paint as I am already familiar with watercolor,,,I have some that I never used , but I don’t think they are artist quality ,,,does anyone use them and is there anything I should know before I shop<<< I am looking at DaVinci

If you mix gouache with a tube colour, you can dry brush it and paint opaquely, which can be a useful tool in your arsenal. If you add water, it can be effective but will dry lighter and you risk a chalky transparent layer over your existing paint. You can lay out a good heavy layer of pure white gouache, let it dry and then carefully (preferably in one stroke), colour the gouache afterwards, much like John Singer Sargent used to do.

I’m not really a watercolourist, but I’ll include a few from my sketchbook where I’ve either gone for entirely opaque watercolour (thick from the tube), or mixed transparent and opaque, with the use of white gouache.

I just use white gouache only and mix it with my watercolour tube colours.

^^^There are situations when reaching for the white tube is inevitable. That being said, I don’t encourage myself to use opaques or white all the time.

Chien Chung Wei is using many shades of white (PW6) pigment based pastel colours to great effect. We could say he’s kind of borderline gouache. There’s a very interesting video were he explains his palette:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up151tADx9w

You need to enable Google cc translation because it’s in Chinese.

You can use watercolor and gouache in the same painting. Zinc/ Chinese white is not as opaque as the gouache, but can be used for subtle effects. Painting done with only gouache will have a different quality than the one which incorporates both transparent watercolors and gouache. You can use only white gouache, but, please keep in mind that white cools the mixture, so you have to adjust the color temperature of the mixture. If you are new to using opaque technique, I also recommend that you try different surfaces (smooth vs rough) as well as try painting on white paper vs toned paper. Here is an example of my recent small study which incorporates transparent watercolors with touches of Chinese and Opaque whites. Good luck!

Thanks Tesh, lovely painting.
Just one thing to watch for, apparently both zinc and titanium white cause some pigments they get in contact with to become less lightfast: Prussian Blue and Dioxazine Violet.
These are the pigments indicated by Handprint but it seems to me that every paint formulated with Zinc White PW4 showed significant lightfastness problems – relative to the robustness of the individual pigment ingredients – Phthalos and Iron Oxides including.

thanks vashette, even if I dont settle into opaque as a focus it looks worth the time to become familiar with it,,,maybe save some failed paintings?