Casein paint is a great sketchbook and illustration medium for oil painters

John Berkey (1932-2008) illustration in Casein.

Over the last year I've tried a lot of different painting mediums. For years I had always gravitated to watercolors. Probably because in art school I did a lot of watercolor inks for my illustrations, it was just my default medium. I had tried using watercolor for landscape and still life painting with mediocre results. That's probably the reason why I never really dove into painting to much in the past because I didn't want to give other mediums a try.

About a year ago I decided I was going to change that and give it a try again. This time I was going to be open to any painting medium like acrylic, oil or pastels.

First (as usual) I tried to give watercolor a go again. I did learn a lot while doing a bunch of sketch paints but after a few months I realized that watercolor just wasn't the painting medium for me. The transparent nature of the medium just befuddled me. I tend to never get it right with the first stroke and that's really the key with so many watercolor techniques. I had to find something more opaque to work with so I could layer, cover up and fix mistakes.

The next logical step was acrylics and I do like them, to a certain point. They do offer a nice opaque quality but I think I was using a student grade acrylic and I just didn't like the look of the finish that well. It was really dull and I'm not a fan of that "look".
Oil pastel was another medium that I did like a lot but it's hard to layer to much with it and I tend want to have 5 or 6 layers even in my sketches so I kept looking.

I've been following the work of James Gurney through his YouTube channel and his blog. He does a lot of sketching, and it makes sense. The more you sketch everyday items in your life the more prepared you'll be to paint those things in a finished painting. He uses a small Moleskine watercolor paper sketchbook. He paints in Casein and watercolor but mostly in Casein paint in the sketchbook. Casein is a water mixable paint that dries quickly to a velvety dull finish. I find it great for the sketchbook. It's made by only one manufacture (that I know of) Jack Richeson Co. You can buy it at Dick Blick or Jerry's.

I've just started sketching with Casein so there will  be more to come on how it works for me but I'll share a couple sketchbook paints below. So far I love the workability. You can layer and pick up the colors on the bottom so they slightly mix with each other. Great for subtle color effects.

Casein Painting banana on red towel.

Casein Painting of Bruce's Yams

If your interested in how Casein was used as an illustration medium in the past have a look at masters of the medium John Berkey and Harry Anderson.