my gouache sky is perfect and completely dead, please tell me what to break
ok so I've been fighting this 9x12 gouache thing for four days, it's the view out my window at like 6:40pm, that specific orange that only lasts about eleven minutes in September. and I got the color. genuinely got it, I mixed it like nine times and the fourth one was right and I cried a little (I know, I know). the gradient is clean, the light is doing the thing over the rooftops, my partner looked at it and went "oh that's nice" which is the exact reaction that means something is wrong.
because it's dead. it's a nice postcard. there's no air in it. every single shape is sitting politely where it should be and there's nothing pushing or pulling and nothing that's a little wrong in a way that makes your eye stick.
I think I've been so scared of mudding it (gouache will punish you instantly, no redo, unlike watercolor where at least it's a slow betrayal) that I've been painting like I'm decorating a cake instead of painting. everything is blended to the edge. no hard stops. and I keep telling myself I'll add the dark accents at the end and I keep not doing it because I'm scared of ruining the orange.
has anyone broken a piece on purpose to save it, like gone in with a value that scares you and just accepted you might wreck it? I need someone to tell me to put a real dark in there or talk me off the ledge, I genuinely can't tell which one I need
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The "oh that's nice" from the partner is the most useful piece of data here. That reaction usually means the image is legible before it is felt. The eye finishes it in one pass and moves on.
Since you ask what to break: the clean gradient is probably the thing. You say every shape sits politely, but a sky like that is never one smooth thing, it comes in bands and stains and small failures of the light. If you've smoothed the gradient until it's pure, you've removed the evidence of the eleven minutes. I'd be tempted to put a bad note back in. One wrong temperature, one shape that interrupts the rooftops too much, something the composition doesn't need.
Also worth trying: don't work from memory of the colour but from the colour as a fact. Nine mixes to get it right is a lot of care, but if the mix is exactly right and the hand is timid, you get a postcard anyway. Gouache will let you be bold and then let you scrape back. That's the fun of it.
What was the question you started with? If it was only "can I get this orange," then the painting has nothing left to answer once you did.
Following this. The "one wrong temperature" idea is the interesting one and I'd push it further: don't just put a bad note in, put it in and then have to earn it back. That's the difference between a mistake and a decision. Also worth remembering gouache is opaque, so you can always paint over a failure. Nothing about the eleven minutes is precious, it's a thing that got away from you. Let it be recorded that way.
"put it in and then have to earn it back" ok. that's the part I hadn't thought about. I was thinking of it as sabotage and you're saying it's a debt, which is a completely different painting. that reframe actually unlocked something for me because now the wrong note has to be answered by the rest of the picture instead of just sitting there being edgy.
and the opaque thing. ugh, yes. I keep treating gouache like it's watercolor and I'm precious about what's underneath when literally nothing is trapped. I think I've been calling the sky precious because I'm scared the actual painting is going to be worse than the color study.
it's a thing that got away from me. going to go wreck it now, genuinely thank you
"legible before it is felt" ok that's going on my wall, that's exactly the thing I couldn't name. and you're right that the clean gradient is the confession here, I smoothed it until it stopped being a sky and started being a swatch. the "small failures of the light" line got me because that's what I actually saw that evening, there were two little dirty bands near the roofline where the haze was doing something ugly and I painted them out because they looked like mistakes. they were the whole thing.
so I'm going to put them back and then probably go one step further and drop a wrong temperature right in the middle of the orange, something slightly green, just to see if it moves. genuinely scared to wreck four days of work but the postcard is already wrecking me so. I'll post the crime scene either way