Oh My Gouache!: The beginner's guide to painting with opaque watercolour

Book is very nice and great condition! Better than I thought it might be! Arrived very Fast and was packed in strong envelope. Price was very good! No problems or issues with this purchase! Berta R.

I loved this book! Every page is a color delight featuring stylish, modern imagery and fresh takes on painting flora and fauna. The Jumbled Geometry project comes with a gorgeous color palette to make the project easy to recreate. Zoe breaks down each of the steps on how to paint a number of items such as the cat painting and the charming potted plant image, which makes tackling these images very unintimidating. I'm thinking of doing the pretty plant image for my punch needle work. I've been curious as to how Zoe does her art, so reading/seeing her techniques on overlaying, mark-making and lettering where really fascinating. A great gouache how-to book.

The colorful style and design of this book is irresistible and joyful. I think it's a good place to start if you are a beginner to gouache painting. You could do much worse--and you probably wouldn't get to enjoy all the cute animals and plants in this lovely book. The author/artist makes it fun and encouraging to play with colors, try different styles, and paint some really neat projects. What I especially appreciated were the tips on digitizing your artwork in Photoshop, to make collages, prints, etc. I've been learning how to use Photoshop, so it was nice to see this little tutorial included-- it's highly relevant for anyone making art today and putting it online. I do wish there was some info or insight about the uses of acrylic gouache too, but I guess for a beginner it's best to stick with plain ol gouache at first anyway. Of course, this book should be a springboard for all the delightful things you can do on your own. I certainly found it motivating, but I would also recommend regular studio time practice, and looking up gouache tutorials online for more in depth demos on things like blending, underpainting, layering, etc.

I have been waiting for this book, and I'm not disappointed! I'm not a beginner but I appreciate the way the projects are broken down to give me an idea of the artist's process. I cannot wait to dive in and follow along, and I look forward to seeing where this leads me in my own work! Beautiful book Zoe!

When they said this book is for beginners, they meant it.As someone that buys a lot of art books, I’m used to the usual 1/3 of each book being taken up by the stuff of “A brush is how you apply paint to paper! Paint is color! Paper is flat!” beginner art instruction. God help the artist-authors that have to satisfy *that* specific requirement by art book publishers.What I wasn’t prepared for was the first 62 pages of this 121-page (really 124 but I’m not counting the bio and indices at the end!) book being the most basic information possible.Pages 12-16 are dedicated to tools, which I think is great. Tools are important and can make or break your results when working with an opaque medium like gouache.Pages 20-28 are dedicated to color theory, which surprises me. Usually, these books pad more with color theory and this one doesn’t. I appreciate that!Where it all falls apart are the next 30 pages of “techniques” which give you a bit of a taste of different techniques but offers so many (ranging from lettering, digitizing your work to clean it up and get a better result, mark making, sketching, etc.) that they never really offer much in the way of depth.A good example of this is where, in the digitizing section, she describes very briefly how she uses the pen tool in Photoshop to cut out her art from a scan to prepare it. If you’ve ever used Photoshop or Illustrator you’ll know how difficult the pen tool is to master!The remainder of the book are projects, but they don’t really feel like anything I haven’t seen done before. This book is expensive for what it is, especially when you compare it to other titles like “Get Started with Gouache”, “The Creature Garden” or “The Joy of Watercolor” which are PACKED with tons of projects to try and learn from for less.None of the projects include the Zebra or Puffin/Penguin critter on the cover (the Puffin/Penguin critter is used as an example in the digitizing section), most of the projects are very… basic. There are 11 projects inside and most just aren’t very challenging or visually interesting. I’m going to include pictures so you can see for yourself what to expect.She had so many interesting examples on the very first page of chickens and bears and armadillos, amazing texture and color work that would have been fun to be guided through but instead the projects are… geometric shape color art and an OMG thought bubble with a little texture work on it. Just so disappointing. The exception to this are the beetles, pheasant and cat projects; they definitely stand out!I was looking forward to this book since I saw it available for pre-order last year. I love new art books! I buy tons of them! But this trend of art books where half of it is filler content and the cover has art you don’t even get to make inside has to stop somewhere.I'm giving it three stars because it's not awful, but it's not great either. Especially not for $22.

Book was sent with cardboard around and wrapped in plastic. It was in great condition to give as a gift.

Beautiful book with lovely illustrations of step-by-step guidance. Definitely making me feel more comfortable with a medium that is new to me. Would buy more books by this author.

I started painting many years ago. First with acrylics, then oils and now watercolors. Gouache has been something alien to me. After reading "Oh My Gouache!" I'm ready to give it a try.

Nice book to paint cats

perfect for my 14yr old grandaughter, colourful, informative and inspiring

I was looking for a book on gouache for beginners but it turned out to be more about lettering, collages and similar not much on how to paint with gouache. Quite disappointed

I bought this to learn how to use gouache paints and this book did not disappoint. Lots of interesting achievable projects.

Great book for a beginner to this medium, with lots of lovely pictures to inspire