Gouache in the Wild: A Guide to Painting with Opaque Watercolor in the Wild

Gouache is the paint that’s hard to spell but easy to love. It’s a form of watercolor that dries fast, travels well, and cleans up easily, with a natural opacity that lets you improvise, change your mind, and fix mistakes. Get started with gouache and hone your skills with this groundbreaking guide by acclaimed painter and bestselling author James Gurney.

This comprehensive guide to gouache grew out of Dinotopia creator and New York Times bestselling author James Gurney’s long-running love affair with opaque watercolor. Gurney’s instructional videos on YouTube have attracted half a million subscribers and millions of views, and his decades of experience in artistic instruction make him the perfect ambassador and instructor for this rapidly growing, readily accessible, and artistically rewarding form of painting. In this book you’ll learn the fine art of painting on location, the nuances of capturing still life as well as human subjects, and the joys and challenges of working with this lively, versatile, and vivid medium.

James Gurney’s unique blending of fact and fantasy has won Hugo, Chesley, Spectrum, and World Fantasy Awards. He is the creator of the illustrated book series Dinotopia. His work has been featured in one-man exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Delaware Art Museum, and the U.S. embassies in Switzerland and Yemen. He lives with his wife, Jeanette, in the Hudson Valley of New York State.