Ala Prima Still Life - from class

This morning I took a vacation day from work and took a class with Marilyn Dale, the woman from whom I have learned so much. This was the first of three classes. This one was 'Working Ala Prima' - which means, essentially, the whole painting is done in one session. Detail isn't as important as seeing and reproducing the relative values of light and dark. The painting I did is below:



When one works 'Ala Prima', or at least if one works as we were taught today, the painting starts by toning the canvas. We used a Burnt Umber acrylic, thinned way down with water, so it would dry quickly. Once the canvas dried, we took a thin brush and a neutral oil color, thinned with Turpenoid and made an outline drawing of the piece. When working Ala Prima, it is very important to draw well. I need to do more of these to kind of figure a few things out, but I DO know that if I were working as I normally do (layered painting) this painting would look much different than it does. Better? I don't know. But absolutely different.