I Get to Play With Paint!!!!

I have been telling myself for years that I wanted to take an art class. I really want to be able to illustrate my own work and I'm terrible at drawing. So when my mother asked if I would go to an art class with her (a shock in itself) I jumped at the chance. It was an Exploring Painting and Drawing class and we could pick one medium to work in. I figured that charcoal would be easy and decided to start with that. My goal was to eventually learn acrylics or gouache.

So we had our first class last night and the instructor suggested two medium as some of the easier ones to work with. The first was pastel chalks which I have only a bit of interest in. I'd be more than happy to learn it but I'm not in love with the medium. The second, I was excited to hear was gouache.

For those of you who don't know, gouache is an opaque watercolor. It is also a heavily used favorite for animation and illustration. It has some of the most vibrant colors and even when the paint dries, those colors stay. You can paint over it. You can retouch work. A good deal of early Disney animation was done in gouache. And I could not be more excited. Imagine thinking that you would have to work up to learning your ideal medium with years of work. Instead they just say go ahead.

So I will be running out to the art store this week to pick up all my necessary supplies. Amazingly someone out there thinks that I'm old enough, heck mature enough, to play with paint. Poor misguided fools. I sat in class all last night thinking, wow you actually believe that I'm somewhat of an adult and can be trusted with paint. Not only that but that I have enough talent to use said paint. I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun and learn as we go. But mostly the five year old inside me just keeps thinking, Yay!!!! I get to play with paint.