Gouache Landscape: Ikara-Flinders Ranges Yuluna Walk
A quick post about painting this 5x7 inch piece that is of a part of the Yuluna loop walk in the Ikara-Flinders Ranges national park.
Gouache painting, river red gums, Aroona valley.
The Walk and the Landscape
This was my favourite walk in the whole national park. There are of course walks that we didn’t get to that time around, and I’d love to go back and do some of the walks around Wilpena Pound when we’re there next, but of the walks we did, and the campgrounds we stayed at, the Aroona campground, the views around it and the walks once can do there were my favourites.
The Flinders Ranges had some of my favourite landscapes, just because there was such variety and possibly because it was winter, there was a lot of wildlife around.
On this particular walk, we’d seen red-cappped robbins again (we’d seen them a few times in the Flinders by this point), and a host of other birds besides. The highlight though, was an echidna! My first, (and so far only) echidna sighting in the wild! I haven’t attempted to paint that yet, but it’ll be soon.
In the meanwhile, this specific scene spoke to me when I was looking for a scene to practice gouache with. The gorgeous river gums really formed a striking image against the creek-bed here, with one of the three sisters of the Aroona valley visible in the background.
I ended up sticking it in my (mostly) Ikara-Flinders Ranges Sketchbook alongside my favourite on-location watercolour postcard from the same Campsite - Aroona.
Challenges Faced
Colour. Realistically, the tree is actually a lot more grey in real life - I had it very white at first, then added greys to make it more what I was seeing, before deciding to go back to a whiter shade. Adding too much grey made the tree really blend in to the background, which wasn’t the effect I was going for.
I did however leave the trees further back greyer. I think it worked well enough.
Detail. The next thing I had a bit of trouble with was how much detail to add (or not). I’d gone in to the ground and added a lot more detail - gravel, stones, grass blades etc, but it started to look really overworked and lose some of its appeal for me so again, I went back in and simplified the ground.
I love that you can do this so easily with gouache.
What was Easy
The composition. I didn’t change much from the photo
The mountain. Having sketched it once, I knew how I’d like to approach it in goauche.
Colour. Mostly, colour was easy apart from the tree issue above. I’m getting really used to my gouache colours, and am even mixing them in pans especially when it is only for a small area. This approach has really freed up how I think about my gouache paints. Another thing that helped with this was having two pans each of the main mixing colours (or colours that are close enough) - that way, I keep one relatively clean, and the other can be a mixing pan.
Of course having dedicated mixing space is better and for skies and some other areas where I really want the colours to be very clean, I get out a separate mixing tray. However, doing that will be harder on the road, so I am trying to force myself to simplify my approach to gouache so I do have the option of taking it outdoors with me. For that reason, I’m trying to be less precious about mixing in the wells especially if it is just 2 colours and a small area. Given I paint small, it usually is simple to do this.
Takeaways/Going forward
I came back to this piece a few times over a couple of days and the things I want to take away from this particular painting are:
Sometimes, it is best to take a step back and come back to a painting later
Practice does = improvement - I already know this, but seeing how much easier gouache is getting for me reinforces that practice and ‘brush miles’ are really the most important factor in improvement, which encourages me to keep going and practicing
Colour need not be literal even when working from a photo
I’m really loving gouache right now. Is there a medium you’re particularly excited about at the moment?