01-12-2020, 10:34 AM
What exactly alla prima painting is can be different depending who you ask. Some people believe it has to be the first session of a painting and it has to be completed after one day. Others consider it more a technique rather than a time constraint and in those cases underpaintings work. Because of this confusion I tend to not use the term too much. I prefer the term direct painting because it is more broad in description focusing on the particular technique of painting opaquely and solidly which is what I do.
The thing about oil painting is that you generally want to work wet-in-wet. When the paint is still wet, you can paint into it in a way to make the brushwork merge together with itself. If you let it dry, you can no longer merge the brushwork into the surface (well you can but it requires using a technique called oiling out and that's its own thing) so in order to make solid well-merged brushwork you essentially have to re-paint the whole "thing" in one session. So like if I'm painting the doll's head and I don't like some part of it and want to adjust it, I have to re-paint that section in order to correct that one thing, I can't just paint the small correction as the brushwork won't merge. This is why setting up a kind of underpainting is good. It gives you a chance to see where the painting is going before getting too far into it, so I don't spend time working on something that I later discover to be in the wrong value range or something like that. It also sets things up so I can work section by section, keeping the areas I'm working on wet as they're finished.
When you're having trouble working from a drawing, what can happen is that if your lines aren't correct, they cause troubles in later stages. Like if you draw the contours of something, then paint the stuff inside of those contours and realise things don't connect properly, that can be because the contours were wrong and you weren't able to see it without that internal information in place. When making preparatory drawings for a painting, it can be good to fully explore the internal stuff so you don't end up with those problems (example http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca...23058v.jpg You can often tell what is a preparatory drawing for a painting as they often have a grid pattern drawn over them to make transferring it on to a canvas easier)
Lines and painting aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Lines aren't a visual thing, they don't exist in the way values exit. They're usually there to represent a contour of form or a change in contrast. When you have a painting, the colors/values themselves represent that form and contrast, so by having lines, you have two things representing the same thing. This can be fine if it's the kind of image you want to make, but if you intend to make a painting of only masses of colors (the way reality looks), the sooner you get rid of the lines, the sooner you'll be able to judge the contrasts of what you're looking at. When you have both going on, it's hard to judge the proper contrasts, you'll often find your colors/values underestimated because the lines increase what the contrasts looks like. You can get around this a bit by having very thin and very light lines, as they don't add too much contrast.
So update. I've been letting things dry, but I've gotten some work done. Defined more of the overall painting. Also today was an extra bright in the afternoon so I decided to work on a little section for a bit. So I worked on the upper left corner, painting the oil lamp and part of the background.
To go over how I paint, it's really simple. The idea is to put the right color in the right spot. So no blending, just patches of colors, mixed up on the palette and placed on the canvas. Some colors blend naturally as you work but the idea is to not intentionally blend colors but to paint transitions manually. This is often contrasted with brushier styles of painting where you brush paints into each other more. A good way to think of it is like Sargent paints more in the latter style whereas Repin paints more in the former, although it's something of a spectrum. Harold Speed talks about this some and it shows up here and there in his discussions on various topics.
Some areas I tend to let things be a bit more flowing, where I want things to feel a bit more relaxed, like clothing in portraits, but it really depends on the painting. I this painting will probably be more straightforward there are no real areas I'd want to do it too much on, however it may change once I have things closer to a finish.
The areas I brought forward like the lamp/background will get another pass later on but I'll paint other sections before getting back there, making sure it's well dried. When it comes to details, I'm of the opinion that things should be as detailed as they need to be and not more. I often find that there's a point where more details distracts from the overall impression and at that point it's probably best to simplify things back. You also loose some material and artistic qualities when all your brushwork is destroyed for the sake of more details, and that's not so nice. The big impression is the important stuff and if you paint that well enough, you don't need details. We will talk more about that when the time comes to finish things.
The painting is made under very blue light so the colors look a bit different when working on it. These pics are under white studio light and it flattens the image and dulls the colors a lot, so it often makes things look much worse, which can be an advantage. Seeing something under perfectly neutral light makes flaws in color jump out, letting me know what to fix. Looking at this now, it's clear that I have to key down the painting in the background and to add more color variation to the bust. The bust was just roughed in quickly with diagonal marks to get something there as I knew it was something I wanted to dedicate an entire session to so I could figure out what I wanted to do with it. The chalice thing also needs better colors in the highlights, but that will be fixed when I dedicate a session to working on it.
I'm really excited about painting the carpet because it has an intricate pattern and if I can paint it well, things are going to look nice. It's also a carpet so I can paint things kind of messy and thick and it should give a carpety material feel.
I think I'll paint the chalice tomorrow, part of the carpet and if I have time get started on the bust. This way I can develop the painting from left to right.
I hope this shows a bit about the colors I'm using, how even though it's a very limited palette, I have more than enough range to paint reds, yellows, greens and some blues. Just mixing things carefully and keeping my brushes clean makes limited palettes fine.
I stretched my smaller canvas and I think I'll make a landscape painting some time soon. I'm waiting to see if we get some snow which would be very nice to paint. That painting I'll probably finish "alla prima".
The thing about oil painting is that you generally want to work wet-in-wet. When the paint is still wet, you can paint into it in a way to make the brushwork merge together with itself. If you let it dry, you can no longer merge the brushwork into the surface (well you can but it requires using a technique called oiling out and that's its own thing) so in order to make solid well-merged brushwork you essentially have to re-paint the whole "thing" in one session. So like if I'm painting the doll's head and I don't like some part of it and want to adjust it, I have to re-paint that section in order to correct that one thing, I can't just paint the small correction as the brushwork won't merge. This is why setting up a kind of underpainting is good. It gives you a chance to see where the painting is going before getting too far into it, so I don't spend time working on something that I later discover to be in the wrong value range or something like that. It also sets things up so I can work section by section, keeping the areas I'm working on wet as they're finished.
When you're having trouble working from a drawing, what can happen is that if your lines aren't correct, they cause troubles in later stages. Like if you draw the contours of something, then paint the stuff inside of those contours and realise things don't connect properly, that can be because the contours were wrong and you weren't able to see it without that internal information in place. When making preparatory drawings for a painting, it can be good to fully explore the internal stuff so you don't end up with those problems (example http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca...23058v.jpg You can often tell what is a preparatory drawing for a painting as they often have a grid pattern drawn over them to make transferring it on to a canvas easier)
Lines and painting aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Lines aren't a visual thing, they don't exist in the way values exit. They're usually there to represent a contour of form or a change in contrast. When you have a painting, the colors/values themselves represent that form and contrast, so by having lines, you have two things representing the same thing. This can be fine if it's the kind of image you want to make, but if you intend to make a painting of only masses of colors (the way reality looks), the sooner you get rid of the lines, the sooner you'll be able to judge the contrasts of what you're looking at. When you have both going on, it's hard to judge the proper contrasts, you'll often find your colors/values underestimated because the lines increase what the contrasts looks like. You can get around this a bit by having very thin and very light lines, as they don't add too much contrast.
So update. I've been letting things dry, but I've gotten some work done. Defined more of the overall painting. Also today was an extra bright in the afternoon so I decided to work on a little section for a bit. So I worked on the upper left corner, painting the oil lamp and part of the background.
To go over how I paint, it's really simple. The idea is to put the right color in the right spot. So no blending, just patches of colors, mixed up on the palette and placed on the canvas. Some colors blend naturally as you work but the idea is to not intentionally blend colors but to paint transitions manually. This is often contrasted with brushier styles of painting where you brush paints into each other more. A good way to think of it is like Sargent paints more in the latter style whereas Repin paints more in the former, although it's something of a spectrum. Harold Speed talks about this some and it shows up here and there in his discussions on various topics.
Some areas I tend to let things be a bit more flowing, where I want things to feel a bit more relaxed, like clothing in portraits, but it really depends on the painting. I this painting will probably be more straightforward there are no real areas I'd want to do it too much on, however it may change once I have things closer to a finish.
The areas I brought forward like the lamp/background will get another pass later on but I'll paint other sections before getting back there, making sure it's well dried. When it comes to details, I'm of the opinion that things should be as detailed as they need to be and not more. I often find that there's a point where more details distracts from the overall impression and at that point it's probably best to simplify things back. You also loose some material and artistic qualities when all your brushwork is destroyed for the sake of more details, and that's not so nice. The big impression is the important stuff and if you paint that well enough, you don't need details. We will talk more about that when the time comes to finish things.
The painting is made under very blue light so the colors look a bit different when working on it. These pics are under white studio light and it flattens the image and dulls the colors a lot, so it often makes things look much worse, which can be an advantage. Seeing something under perfectly neutral light makes flaws in color jump out, letting me know what to fix. Looking at this now, it's clear that I have to key down the painting in the background and to add more color variation to the bust. The bust was just roughed in quickly with diagonal marks to get something there as I knew it was something I wanted to dedicate an entire session to so I could figure out what I wanted to do with it. The chalice thing also needs better colors in the highlights, but that will be fixed when I dedicate a session to working on it.
I'm really excited about painting the carpet because it has an intricate pattern and if I can paint it well, things are going to look nice. It's also a carpet so I can paint things kind of messy and thick and it should give a carpety material feel.
I think I'll paint the chalice tomorrow, part of the carpet and if I have time get started on the bust. This way I can develop the painting from left to right.
I hope this shows a bit about the colors I'm using, how even though it's a very limited palette, I have more than enough range to paint reds, yellows, greens and some blues. Just mixing things carefully and keeping my brushes clean makes limited palettes fine.
I stretched my smaller canvas and I think I'll make a landscape painting some time soon. I'm waiting to see if we get some snow which would be very nice to paint. That painting I'll probably finish "alla prima".
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