If you’re juggling your time to squeeze in painting sessions, alla prima painting can be just the thing to keep your painting output flowing in spite of an action packed schedule.
Don’t let this fancy name scare you off.
It’s just an Italian phrase that means ‘at once,’ and in art it refers to completing a painting in one sitting or before the paint dries.
Alla Prima History
The alla prima painting style has been used for centuries. In the 15th and 16th century, a few artists began using this shortcut method of painting. The painting style of the time required arduous painting sessions that continued over a length of time. An underpainting was roughed in on the support and followed with layer after layer of paints and glazes to achieve the final product. Each layer of paint was allowed to dry before the next application. Obviously, months were required to complete a single painting.
Wet in wet painting speeds up the painting process a great deal, and with this technique, the brushstrokes are now textural additions to a painting. Until this technique became popular, brushstrokes were considered shoddy workmanship. That’s why glazing with numerous thin layers was used to eradicate any appearance of a brushstroke.
With alla prima painting, brushstrokes and the mixing of paint directly on the canvas is as much a part of the piece as the subject matter itself. Wet in wet painting encourages spontaneity and the results are a fresh and natural feeling to your work. This type of painting is what you may already do when you’re sketching to work out compositional problems or doing plein air painting.
Tips For Alla Prima Painting
Let’s go through some great tips to get your painting on the right track…
Plan Your Color Palette Wisely
Even though this style of painting is quite instinctive, you need to do some planning. You’re going to complete the painting with one layer of paint, so you should decide beforehand the colors you’ll use.
If you’re using charcoal to develop your composition, be careful with the amount of drawing you do. The charcoal can mix with your paint, and since there’s only that one layer, you may end up with a muddy mess.
Alla prima painting lends itself to a limited palette. Choosing a restricted combination of colors allows you to blend on the support and speed up your painting time by reducing the number of hues to work into the painting.
If you’re confident in your composition, you can forego drawing and jump right in with your brush. Lay in the masses of your composition with a thin layer of paint. You’re just defining shapes at this point and roughing in the basic value of the form.
Use A Toned Support
If you use a toned support for your painting, you’ve already gotten a good start on the medium-range neutral color of your piece. It also proves less distracting when you’re not faced with a blank, white canvas. If you don’t want bits of stark white canvas peeking out, this eliminates the need to paint painstakingly every millimeter of canvas.
Your toned canvas can be any color you like, but there are a few guidelines that will help you decide. Determine the lighting of your composition. If it’s a sunny day, you may use a Yellow Ocher to give a warm glow to your painting. If you’re painting a dreary, rainy day, a gray neutral brings down the atmosphere of your piece. For a night scene, a blue tone gives a dark undertone to your canvas. Whatever color you choose for toning your support, it provides unity to your painting and a value basis from which to add light and dark tones.
Work From Dark To Light
This seems to work best for most painters. If you start with light paint and then proceed to dark colors, you’ll never be able to achieve a deep, saturated dark, as you’ll contaminate the dark pigment with the already-applied light paint.
If you reserve your lightest paints for the final application, they will remain truly light and your deeper tones will maintain their depth of value. It also helps to keep your deepest shades of paint thin and build up the thickness of your paint as you move to the lighter tones.
Establish The Value Of Your Focal Point
If you establish the value of your composition at the beginning of your painting, you’ll spend less time trying to compensate or alter the relative values of the objects surrounding the focal point. Once you’ve set your baseline, it should be easy to add the shadows and highlights.
Use Your Brushes In Sequence
In alla prima painting, every brush stroke counts. Start your painting with your biggest brush and use it to lay in your large masses and begin defining their contours. As you work, reduce the size of your brush to allow for increasing details and refinement of the piece.
Continue to use the largest brush you can until you’re down to the final detail or highlight. Reserve that tiny brush for the highlight in an eye, the minute silhouette of a bird in flight on the horizon or your signature in the corner.
Make sure to use plenty of paint. The idea is to make each stroke count, and being miserly with your paint just means you’ll be spending more time adding stroke after stroke of minuscule dabs of paint to get the coverage you want.
Don’t Overwork Your Painting
If you’re unhappy with a passage, scrape off the offending area and begin again. Daubing more and more paint onto an area only serves to muddy that section. You’re better off to start fresh and re-do the part that’s bothersome to keep your spontaneous look going.
Alla prima painting is a great way to loosen up and focus on the basics of composition, value and color. It’s easy to be consumed by detail when you go back time and time again to tweak a painting. Spending too much time on a painting can take it from natural and painterly to contrived and drab.
