A Quick Alla Prima From Last Night
Greetings and salutations Everyone!
In this post I thought I’d share this quick alla prima painting of my water bottle I finished last night. I really enjoy doing these small practice pieces. I like the challenge in seeing how much ground I can cover in a smaller amount of time as well it assists in keeping my drawing skills sharp. In working in this manner, you really do find out how comfortable you really are in working wet into wet. I also like it in the sense where it keeps me from zeroing in on the smaller forms to fast, and so it forces me to constantly be aware of the fundamentals and the bigger picture, leaving out anything unnecessary.
At first I began with a pre toned surface and began drawing in the larger preliminary shapes with thinned raw umber. I like working on a pre toned surface because I finding staring into a blank white surface can be very distracting. When one stares into it, your pupils constrict and therefore it becomes increasingly difficult to accurately judge values. At the same time, when working on a toned surface it forces you to keep your lights opaque. Paint is inherently transparent and I admit I have a bad habit of painting thin. You always want to remember that you want to keep your shadows transparent and your lights opaque.
Always remaining conscious of edges, I then began massing in value in the background around the perimeter of the water bottle. Keeping in mind that it is much easier to work from back to front.
Now that I have my generalized block in, this is the stage where it required an extreme amount of focus. Starting from the edges of the water bottle and moving inwards, I like to began at edges and work away from them as that allows for greater control of paint manipulation. Working away from these edges in the efforts of rendering form in this way is commonly referred to as “tiling”. Typically what you would do as you’d already have your value strings mixed out you would began with your darks and work into the light. You want to apply the paint in strokes almost like swatches or kind of like how the name suggests...like tiles! You want to apply the paint thinly, but thick enough so that it will cover. Constantly fiddling with the paint or “licking” the brush as it’s called is frowned upon. For best results you’ll want to wipe the brush with the rag after each tile.
Considering while working on an alla prima painting, I’m still conceptualizing in working in this way, although I can’t afford to work that methodical as time is of the essence! While I’m tiling/applying paint, I’m always thinking in terms of painting directly to the point where each brushstroke is aimed at being a finishing stroke. I then begin to build the adjacent strokes, the adjacent forms around the previously applied ones. As you’ve probably guessed by now, working in this manner is sort of like piecing together a puzzle?!
After I finished the water bottle I then filled in the rest of the background before finishing the table/ground plane. Massing in the cast first shadow first I then began to work away from it starting with its edges.
The palette I used for this painting was titanium white, burnt sienna, quinacridone rose, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, and ivory black. The surface was an acrylic gesso primed piece of watercolor paper.
If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to let me know?
Thanks for reading Everyone!
-James Hansen
https://jameszenartist.weebly.com/