Watercolor's opaque cousin — same water-thinned binder (gum arabic), same pigments, but with added chalk or barium sulfate opacifier so the paint covers what's beneath it rather than letting the paper show through. The illustration paint of every mid-century commercial illustrator (Push Pin Studios, Saul Bass, the Polish poster school), every architectural rendering (the watercolor-architectural-rendering canon), every flat-color graphic-design comp before computers. The matte, flat-color hand that dries with no surface sheen and reads as a painted illustration. The 'designers gouache' designation distinguishes the high-pigment-load illustration grade from the cheaper 'school' or 'poster' gouache. Holbein, Winsor & Newton, and Schmincke are the heritage canon; Daniel Smith and Holbein Acryla Gouache (acrylic-binder variant — water-thinable but waterproof when dry) are the modern variations. Buy from Dick Blick / specialty art-supply houses.
Water-soluble pigmented coating, similar formulation to watercolor (pigment + gum arabic binder + glycerin humectant + water) but with added opacifier — typically 10-20 percent barium sulfate (precipitated chalk) or chinese white (zinc oxide) — that scatters light and prevents the paper showing through. Pigment-to-binder ratio higher than watercolor (more pigment loading). Tube format standard (15-30 ml typical). Acryla Gouache and similar modern variants substitute acrylic emulsion for gum arabic binder, retaining water-thinning and water cleanup but producing a waterproof film when dry (the canonical fault of traditional gouache — water-re-activates the dry film — is solved by acrylic-binder versions). Lightfastness ratings same scale as watercolor. Dries to flat matte film with no surface sheen, even film thickness — the property exploited for graphic-design / illustration flat-color work. Brushes evenly without ridges; can be re-coated for exact-color match work; can be airbrushed (with thinning) for smooth gradient work. Cleans up with water (traditional gum arabic) or water-then-soap (acrylic Acryla variant). Resin identification: not part of consumer recycling; tube packaging mixed-material.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere matte finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: matte albedo #a85838 metallic 0.00 roughness 0.75 ior 1.45 transmission 0.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00
{
"albedo": "#a85838",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.75,
"ior": 1.45,
"transmission": 0.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Gouache (Designers / Opaque Watercolor) · finish: matte
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_gouache_designers")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.3916, 0.0976, 0.0395, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.750
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.450
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.000
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Gouache (Designers / Opaque Watercolor) · finish: matte
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_gouache_designers", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (168, 88, 56)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.750)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.450)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Gouache (Designers / Opaque Watercolor) \u00b7 finish: matte",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.3916,
"g": 0.0976,
"b": 0.0395
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.75,
"ior": 1.45,
"opacity": 1.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.0,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_gouache_designers",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.3916,
0.0976,
0.0395,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.75
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_ior": {
"ior": 1.45
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Gouache (Designers / Opaque Watercolor) · finish: matte
def Material "mat_gouache_designers" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_gouache_designers/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.3916, 0.0976, 0.0395)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.750
float inputs:ior = 1.450
float inputs:opacity = 1.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
Winsor & Newton designers gouache technical bulletins; Schmincke gouache literature.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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