The basis of gouache: its origin and history

This paper describes in detail the characteristics and historical origin of gouache for you. The nature and techniques of gouache are closely related to oil painting and watercolor painting. Like watercolor painting, water-soluble pigments are used. Opaque gouache pigment will produce different degrees of watercolor effect if more water is mixed, but it can't be compared with watercolor in water color activity and transparency. Containing powder means limiting the smooth activity of watercolor. Therefore, gouache painting generally does not use the method of multi-moisture color matching, but uses white and pink to adjust the brightness of color, and expresses its unique color effect through thick ink and heavy color. This is similar to the painting of oil painting. Because opaque gouache pigment and oil painting pigment are both pigments with hiding power, gouache is a kind of painting between watercolor painting and oil painting. It absorbed some methods and techniques of watercolor painting and oil painting, and formed its own technique system.

In foreign countries, gouache painting has no independent painting species. Generally classified as watercolor painting, it is called opaque watercolor painting, or advertising poster painted with gouache pigment. Collectively referred to as gouache. In China, due to the restriction of social, economic and cultural conditions, the popularization of fine arts and the rapid development of practical fine arts have promoted the continuous popularization and improvement of gouache painting. It has a complete and systematic set of techniques that are different from other paintings, and it has become an independent painting with a mass base in the field of painting and is deeply loved by professional painters, thus showing its unique aesthetic value and artistic style.

The origin of gouache painting is very early, and the murals of ancient grottoes, tombs and temples at home and abroad are all painted with water-soluble pigments, which can prove this. For example, the murals of Dunhuang Grottoes in China during the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Buddhist art of Xinjiang Grottoes in the Western Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the murals and meticulous paintings of Yongle Palace in the Six Dynasties, as well as ancient college paintings and folk paintings, are all painted with water-soluble powdery pigments. Most of the murals in ancient Roman underground tombs are rubber powder paintings made of glue or egg white mixed pigment powder. The original murals of Italian Renaissance artists were discovered by experts in the later restoration process, and some of them were also painted with rubber powder pigment. These paintings, which have long appeared at home and abroad, all have the basic artistic characteristics of gouache, which shows that the production and use of gouache pigments have a long history. This kind of ancient gouache painting is of great significance to the perfection and development of modern gouache painting, although the varieties of pigments used are limited and the tools and methods of painting are different from those of modern gouache painting.

Modern gouache is actually a branch of the development of British watercolor painting in the18th century, and its emergence and development are closely related to the emergence and development of watercolor painting in continental Europe. According to the existing art materials, it can be concluded that 15 to 16 century German master Diu Lei (1471-kloc-0/528) used watercolors to paint landscapes, animals and plants when he was studying painting. The watercolors he uses are often mixed with opaque white and pink, or bright parts are painted with white and pink, which is the performance effect of gouache painting. Diu Lei's watercolor painting has just started. As a variety and method of painting, it was not until18th century that British watercolor painting gradually improved and became an independent painting in the painting world.

In the early stage of the emergence and development of watercolor painting art, the value of watercolor painting was not fully recognized by people. People think that watercolor painting is not as high in aesthetic value and economic value as oil painting. They are used to looking at this new kind of painting with the traditional eyes of appreciating oil painting, unable to get rid of the influence of the superiority theory of oil painting, and regard watercolor painting as a kind of low-level painting. To this end, many watercolor painters learn from the painting techniques of oil painting to improve the expressive force of watercolor and strive to improve the artistic value and status of watercolor. In the process of drawing lessons from oil painting performance skills, only by using white, pink and opaque colors can we achieve the full, in-depth, concrete and heavy effect of oil painting performance. In this way, watercolor painting actually lost the smooth and transparent artistic characteristics of traditional watercolor painting and became a gouache painting similar to oil painting. By the second half of18th century, it had become a branch of watercolor painting family.

In the process of gouache painting, transparent watercolor is used as the first background color at first, and then opaque colors are used to draw the scene into a concrete three-dimensional space effect, which makes it have a strong sense of reality. The finished work has lost the smooth and transparent artistic features of traditional watercolor painting and formed the concept of modern gouache painting.