Chapter 11: Gouache

There is another type of water-based paint, gouache.

Gouache is an opaque watercolor. It doesn’t blend well or easily, it has a vividness but flatness of color.

In the modern American painter Jacob Lawrence’ Links to an external site.s You can buy bootleg whiskey for twenty-five cents a quart, from the Harlem Series (1942-43) he uses flat fields of guache color to their advantage. 

Here was see a bright yellow room with an emerald green floor. The tabletop is tilted forward, and the geometric shapes of the figures and the objects play with the viewer’s sense of perspective. The disorientation of the room is similar to the drunkenness of the figures as they listen to the jazz music blowing out of the small radio in the background. The brilliancy of the colors is a reflection of the bright and joyous Jazz music coming through the radio.