The New Year
Long time, no see. The past month has been full of all the things you would expect: holiday travel, illness, loafing around not doing any work, scrambling in a panic to catch up on work, eating, drinking, joy, and sorrow.
Mean Old Gouache
I taught my first online gouache workshop last weekend. It was humbling!
Gouache is a medium that I picked up almost 20 years ago and learned to use on my own by experimentation. Everything I know about it, I know through intuition and years of experience. You can’t teach either thing, of course, and gouache is a wily medium. It dries either lighter or darker than you expect, depending on the pigment. Dry layers can turn back into wet paint and mix with the colors of new layers added over top. If you know, you know. Painting with gouache is chaotic.
Despite all of that, it’s my favorite medium. My relationship with it is deep - always deepening and shifting. I had a really nice weekend painting with a small group of artists and helping them to develop their own deep, shifting relationships with gouache. I was so impressed with the work they made. I’ll definitely do it again.
Last weekend we painted from Renaissance portraits. I’m not sure what we’ll do next time. Self-portraits, maybe? I’ll announce some more workshop dates and details in the next few weeks. This one is a very small class - around 12 students - so it fills up fast, and paid subscribers will get a heads up on registration. Just saying.
Infinite thanks to comics genius and good buddy Nicole Georges for being my TA last weekend and for helping me get organized to teach these workshops. Keep an eye out for Nicole’s Graphic Memoir Workshop. I hear it’s amazing.
RUMPELSTILTSKIN!
Rumpelstilskin, retold by Mac Barnett and illustrated - in gouache - by me, comes out on February 3rd. Mac and I will be visiting a bunch of bookstores in the first half of February. Come say hi if we’re in your town.
Sunday, 2/1 at 2:00 PM: Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA
Tuesday, 2/3 at 6:00 PM: The Rabbit hOle in Kansas City, MO
Thursday, 2/5 at 7:00 PM: Copperfield’s in Petaluma, CA
Friday, 2/6 at 6:30 PM: Literary Arts in Portland, OR
Monday, 2/9 at 7:00 PM: Skylight Books in LA, CA
You can pre-order the book right now. In fact, we would love that. If you pre-order from Scholastic you’ll get a print signed by Mac and me while supplies last.
That’s all for now. Take care, everyone. Lots of love to all of you in the brand new year.
Join Nicole Georges’ patreon.
Subscribe to Stef Choi’s substack.
That description of gouache is so spot on. Every lesson in gouache should open with it like a pledge or a prayer, a preparation. The workshop has to be fabulous (also, Yay! for TA Nicole!)
What is the ALA event in Chicago? I was looking all around but am coming up empty-handed.