Gouache Sketchbook: Painting Your Surroundings by Don Kilpatrick III

Don Kilpatrick III is an American artist, illustrator, and educator based in Detroit.

Gouache Sketchbook: Painting Your Surroundings is a course on journaling and painting scenes from everyday life. It’s not painting on location though but working with reference photos that you can take yourself. While the course is said to be suitable for beginners, it would be easier for students to follow along if there’s some prior knowledge to drawing, especially observation drawing because this course is about drawing from what you see in life.

The course covers setting up a painting workspace, color wheel basics, value grouping, color relativity, colour schemes, creating thumbnails and painting the final project which is a street scene (above).

In terms of materials, you need a sketchbook, pencils, paint, brushes, and a smartphone or camera. Kilpatrick uses acrylic gouache with the appropriate brushes. Paper is just mixed media paper.

There’s also a lesson on how you can take reference photos.

What I like about the course is it doesn’t focus on realism but an interpretation of the scene. There’s a lesson where Kilpatrick used two different colour schemes to paint the same scene, and it shows clearly that the actual colours you use doesn’t really matter as long as there’s the proper value structure beneath which you can find out by creating thumbnails.

Check out this course by Don Kilpatrick and reviews on Domestika.

Price of this course is usually around US $19, but the price will vary depending on whether there are any promotion. When you buy any course through the Domestika affiliate links, I earn some commission at not extra cost to you.