I've been a fan of Mr. Gurney since I started to learn to paint. His videos are friendly, informative, and cover a variety of topics surrounding plein air painting. I learned about casein through some of his videos, and filed the idea of trying it out for later. Well, as I ran out of my tiny gouache kit recently, I decided to switch over to casein for a bit. Part of the allure is (as always) trying new things, but it's also more economical as the tubes I bought are about 2-and-a-bit times bigger than a tube of gouache I've been buying. So, I'm taking this as an opportunity to try painting larger pieces on cheap 9x12 mixed media paper.

So far, I like it, but it is indeed different. Casein seems globbier, and harder to move around. The colours I got are from an underpainting set, so they are a bit more muted than what you would get in a standard primary-kit when buying a pack of tube paint. Interestingly, it's challenging to mix a black - just doing the darkest two colours in the kit (Payne’s Grey and Umber) don't quite get there. I haven't done enough casein painting yet to know what reliably makes the darkest colour with the tubes I have; but mushing a bunch of colours together has worked in the past ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I also can't quite mix a green with the yellow ochre and the Permasol Blue I have, but it makes for an interesting challenge and limited palette.

I'll be working with these tubes for a while I figure, so I'll try and do a post about casein once they are finished up (that might be in a long while!).