Painting the British Graveyard in Gouache

English Graveyard in Gouache
Having joined the “Paint a Graveyard on Location” challenge at Gurney Journey, I went to a small english cemetery located at about 20 minutes from my town. It was the graveyard of an old castle that belonged to the Nelson family (the one of Admiral Nelson).

It was the first test run of my new lightweight sketch easel (on which I will write a blog post soon), and gouache as well, having only used it a couple of times at home.

The result is… well. I am not happy with it. The dapples light caused by the tree canopy above me encouraged me to try some warm/cool contrast between the lit and shaded areas, but I took it excessively far and got a terrible effect.

The challenge requiring to use only 3 colors, I chose Raw Sienna, Burt Sienna and Ultramarine Light, all by Winsor&Netwon, with the addition of white of course.

I have really struggled to get smooth edges, as Gouache is so opaque that it dried the very second after I put it down on paper. Need more practice on this.

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