Phil Cahill by Phil Cahill

Lovely painting Phil. Did you have to do much negative painting to get all that smashing detail in the hedge bottom? I think your distant tree's, behind the gate are super.

The thing about gouache is that you can layer it, Fiona - so he may not have used any negative painting at all. I like the chalkiness of gouache - I think I'd call it creaminess, as an alternative. It's a beautiful medium in competent hands - and it's certainly in highly competent hands here: it really suits the English countryside, with its soft, rich colours.

Thank you both. One of the beauties of gouache is that unlike watercolour, you can paint lighter colours on top of each other - more in the manner of my initial book illustration training, I certainly prefer it to watercolour zany day. In my younger days it was called poster colour. However, the 'hedge' was done by painting the background first and then painting successful lighter colours on top of the background. I didm't need to paint negative shapes at all. Thank you for your comments Robert - I think 'creaminess' is probably better.

'zany'?? read 'any'. Do have a look at my other paintings in gouache on this site.