Esh Tsai Art Portfolio - Incarnate Village

Incarnate Village

2025

9" x 12"

Gouache on Watercolor Paper

concept and citations

A dense temperate rainforest of massive bone trees where the vestiges of ancient science dwell.

An environment with metaphorical elements that portray a character's subjective perception of their surrounding world. Drawing from narrative themes of religion, sacrifice, and immortality, I incorporated two figures, a pair of hands, and a skull into the dense forest.

process

This was a very experimental piece as I tackled one of the mediums I have struggled with in the past: gouache. In hopes of a more successful outcome, I applied several techniques listed below.

Initial sketch:

Wetting Both Sides of the Paper Before Painting: Usually, I dampen only the front of my paper for fear of it becoming overworked and disintegrating as I use watercolor. However, I decided to try dampening both for this piece, which allowed for an extended time for painting with the wet-on-wet technique, resulting in a base layer of transparent gradients.

Wet on Wet with Gouache Paint: In previous paintings, I used gouache more like acrylic paint, layering and blending opaque swatches of color. But in hopes of achieving a more dimensional appearance, I chose to start with layers of transparent gouache and render with small opaque details. This allowed for more control over values and a less matte appearance.

Painting Negative Space: Depth is typically depicted through atmospheric perspective, where the foreground has the darkest values and greatest contrast, with both characteristics decreasing into the receding background. Instead, to convey a cavernous forest, where foliage restricts sunlight, I made the background the darkest values, illuminating the midground focal point with the lightest. However, this meant I would have to paint in reverse, since darker gouache paint is more easily layered on top of lighter ones. After the transparent washes, I painted in the shadows, defining the lighter foliage and trees by surrounding dark negative space.

Black Paint: I usually avoid black in my wet media paintings as mixing black paint with colors can result in desaturation and muddiness. However, to achieve background depth for this piece, I utilized black as its high pigmentation absorbs color, creating a void-like appearance, whereas a dark, desaturated brown may have flattened the forest. By placing black next to a saturated blue or green with a similar dark value, I achieved a smooth transition from color to black, with the contrast of the black also making the colors more vivid.

Calligraphy Brush: the versatile tapered brush tip shape allows for both broad washes and fine details, and an overall smooth texture, reducing the number of brushes I usually use.