Alla Prima painting workshop

Last month I took a three day Alla Prima still life oil painting workshop at Raw Umber Studios in my local town of Stroud. It felt like a slightly daunting prospect to paint three paintings in three days when I would usually take over three hundred hours to paint one of my large portraits. The challenge of working from life was also nerve wracking as I always work from photographic references. The idea was to paint one painting a day - which was a period of about six hours with some breaks.*

We had a great tutor, Lizet Dingemans who has trained at LARA and at the Angel Academy in Florence and I felt somewhat intimidated by my lack of classical (or rather any actually ‘useful’) training. I needn’t have though as she was really lovely.

On day one we painted a cast using an imprimatura (or stained background). I found this difficult as I am used to working on a white canvas – preferring to retain the whitest whiteness of the skin of my model’s make-up for that Pierrot aesthetic, as well as a generally light background. I’m also used to painting onto a dry surface and instead I needed to wipe my brush clean after every stroke, this took some getting used to. I don’t think I ever adjusted to standing up all day to paint – this is definitely not something I’m accustomed to, and I did find myself pining after the comforts of my home studio chair from time to time.

In order to draw out the image we were briefed in ‘comparative measuring’ - it took a while for me to work out how to do this. Again, out of my usual comfort zone where I would normally project my image directly onto the canvas and know that everything was in its correct place and ready to go – I had to draw it all out and measure from scratch!

The second day was slightly tainted for me by feelings of grief (for the loss of Vicky which filters into my daily life) and so it was harder to concentrate and I think this showed up in the painting I produced. We were taught how to do a Raw Umber ‘wipe out’ – where you wipe away parts of the imprimatura to create highlights and midtones of the image you are drawing out. This is a fast way of drawing out an image and setting out your highlights, midtones and shadows in a way that is very flexible and can be easily amended. Below is the painting at the ‘wipe out’ stage before I began painting, this was achieved using paper towels and my finger!

I did find this method extremely messy and a million miles away from my usual approach but I did manage to make it work in the end. I think the trickiest part of this was then having to paint on an already wet, dark surface which again required the brush to be cleaned after each brushstroke. The plus side of this method is that it makes you bolder and more confident in your brushstrokes, because you want to make each one count.

We were taught about palette organisation (which resulted in me later going on to purchase a very beautiful Mabef palette which looks like it could have come straight out of a Renaissance studio!) and ensuring you create your colour mixes working from light to dark. Lizet also spoke about the different kinds of marks different brushes make and I must confess to always blending the hell out of all my brush strokes, so this talk sparked some ideas for creating a more varying array of brushstrokes in the future.

On the third day I painted an object that I purchased several years ago in Naples – an Italian theatrical mask- and have been meaning to get around to painting. Here I used an imprimatura of Prussian Blue and Raw Umber, followed by the wipe out method. In this way I managed to finish the mask in the six hour time frame with even a bit of time to spare.

Since being back in the comfort of my own studio I have noticed that my approach to painting has become bolder and more confident. I don’t think I am going to embrace using a dark imprimatura or the wipe out method for my large scale portraits, but I have definitely picked up a few tips and tricks that I hope will help me on my way to becoming a better painter.

Information on Raw Umber Studios and upcoming courses can be found here.

Information on tutor Lizet Dingemans can be found here.

*If you would like to know more about why it’s important to take breaks whilst painting then please read this post and learn from my devastating experience of the damage not taking proper care of your body can do.