Gouache

Also called Gouache painting

Gouache uses opaque water-based paint, balancing covering power with the agility of brushwork, and has long served both painting and design studies. It commonly dries to a soft matte surface. Flat passages can overlap or retain dry-brush grain, and lighter paint can rebuild highlights instead of relying entirely on untouched white paper.

Kind: Medium
Lineage: Drawing and Painting Media
Related styles: 1

Key traits

01Opaque color areas can cover underlying layers, allowing light paint over dark passages.
02The dry surface is commonly matte, with limited specular reflection.
03Brushwork may produce flat areas, changes in paint thickness or visible stroke texture.
04Adjacent color shapes and varied edge softness model form, while diluted passages can reveal the support.

Prompt

[subject], opaque gouache illustration, matte pigment, visible flat-brush strokes, paperboard texture, saturated yet soft colors, simplified shapes

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Related styles

1 more styles for members

Easy to confuse

Transparent Watercolor

Gouache usually uses more opaque water-based paint for covering, correction, and layering; Transparent Watercolor primarily builds luminosity through transparent layers and reflected paper light. Works can mix both methods, and a matte surface alone does not identify the medium.

Lineage & relations

Shared techniques

Persian Miniature PaintingThe Iranian album painting Portrait of a Russian Ambassador uses opaque watercolor, ink, and gold. Such works share opaque water-based paint layering with gouache practice, without implying identical pigment recipes across all Persian miniatures.

Compare with

Transparent WatercolorTransparent watercolor often depends on the light of the support; gouache commonly builds opaque coverage and matte color areas, while actual handling can vary.

Sibling styles

Drawing and Painting MediaView in domain

Transparent WatercolorMedium

Sources

The Met：Watercolor