Gouache Paint Recipe

Materials: Tempered glass slab, glass muller, paint tube or paint pans, sieve, palette knife, mortar & pestle

Pigments used for swatch: Hopi Sunflower Lake Pigment (LC)

Ingredients

3 tsp lake pigment powder
10 - 25 ml PVA - Polyvinyl Alcohol. The amount varies depending on pigment absorption level, you may need to add more or less.
1 tsp chalk filler optional* (for increasing opacity)
1/4 tsp Gum Arabic optional

Paint Making Steps

1. Grind down 3 tsp pigment in a mortar and pestle to avoid clumps. Then strain the pigment through a sieve onto a tempered glass slab.

2. Use a muller in circles to blend and grind the PVA and pigment into a smooth paste until there is little to no grit in the paste.

3. If the paint lacks opacity when swatching you can add up to 1 tsp of chalk filler and mull again.

4. If the paint dries down into a powdery swatch you can add more polyvinyl alcohol or 1/4 tsp of

Gum Arabic and mull again to help with binding.

5. Scrape the paint into a paint tube or a paint pan. Detailed instructions are included on the storing paint page on our downloadable pdf.

Note: The Hollyhock, Black-eyed Susan, and Coreopsis lake pigments came from full-concentration (FC) dye baths while all other swatches were made from leftover dye baths at low concentration (LC).