Painting in the Chowder

James Gurney demos a technique for achieving atmosphere using gouache and watercolor

- James Gurney

We're in Bennington, Vermont. Light rain and mist, 100 percent humidity, and more on the way. Bad weather for watercolor, right? Hold on, though—there's an opportunity here. It's actually perfect for what I call the “chowder technique,” named after that New England soup with a milky broth that unifies chunks of flavor. In painting, the idea is to lay down a damp layer of white gouache and drop colors into it. In the following pages, I'll take you through the steps for painting with the chowder technique.

Stage 1 Setup

I set up my tripod easel next to my wife, under the porch of a public building that's closed today. We're sheltered from direct rain, but with this humidity everything will take ages to dry. Here's the palette: a pan set of transparent watercolors from various manufacturers, plus a few squeezes of gouache colors (just white, cadmium red, cadmium yellow and Prussian blue). The gouache sits on the metal side panels of the watercolor set.

Stage 2 Underdrawing