Frans Hals - Portrait of Jasper Schade CZE NG

Wet-on-wet, or ''alla prima'' (Italian, meaning ''at first attempt''), direct painting or au premier coup, is a

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint. Used mostly in

oil painting Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the Binder (material), binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or oil on coppe ...

, the technique requires a fast way of working, because the work has to be finished before the first layers have dried.

Technique

Traditionally, a new layer of oil-based paint is applied to most parts of a painting only after allowing a previous layer to dry completely; this drying process can take from several days to several weeks, depending on the thickness of the paint. In contrast, work performed using ''alla prima'' can be carried out in one or more sessions (depending on the types of paint used and their respective drying times), and it is common for such a work to be finished in only one session or "sitting". In the medium of watercolors, wet-on-wet painting requires a certain finesse in embracing unpredictability. Highly translucent and prone to accidents, watercolor paint will bloom in unpredictable ways that, depending on the artist's frame of mind, can be a boon or a burden.

History

Wet-on-wet painting has been practiced alongside other techniques since the development of oil painting and was used by several of the major

Early Netherlandish painters Early may refer to: Places in the United States * Early, Iowa, a city * Early, Texas, a city * Early Branch, a stream in Missouri * Early County, Georgia * Fort Early, Georgia, an early 19th century fort Music * Early B, stage name of Jamaican d ...

in parts of their pictures, such as

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...

in the

Arnolfini portrait ''The Arnolfini Portrait'' (or ''The Arnolfini Wedding'', ''The Arnolfini Marriage'', the ''Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife'', or other titles) is an oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dated 14 ...

, and

Rogier van der Weyden Rogier van der Weyden (; 1399 or 140018 June 1464), initially known as Roger de le Pasture (), was an Early Netherlandish painting, early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces, and commis ...

.National Gallery Publications: ''The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools'' by Lorne Campbell, 1998, . Since the mid-19th century, the use of commercially produced paints in small collapsible tubes has facilitated an easily accessible variety of colors to be used for rapid and on-the-spot painting.

Impressionists Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subjec ...

such as

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...

, post-Impressionists such as

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...

, realists such as

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 15, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era, Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil ...

and

Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...

and

George Bellows George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realism, American realist painting, painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art ...

, Expressionists such as Chaïm Soutine and

Yitzhak Frenkel Yitzhak Frenkel (; 1899–1981), also known as Isaac Frenkel or Alexandre Frenel, was an Israeli painter, sculptor and teacher. He was one of the leading Jewish artists of the School of Paris, l’École de Paris and its chief practitioner in Is ...

, and the

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...

have in different ways employed this technique, and it is still heavily used by both figurative and non-figurative fine artists. Artist

Bob Ross Robert Norman Ross (October 29, 1942 – July 4, 1995) was an American painter and art instructor who created and hosted '' The Joy of Painting'', an instructional television program that aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS in the United States, ...

employed the technique for his show ''

The Joy of Painting ''The Joy of Painting'' is an American half-hour instructional television show. Created and hosted by painter Bob Ross, it ran from January 11, 1983, to May 17, 1994. In most episodes, Ross taught techniques for landscape oil painting, completin ...

'' in order to produce complete pieces in real-time within a single episode, after learning the technique from his mentor William "Bill" Alexander.

In industry

Wet-on-wet applications are common in the auto industry. A handful of products exist allowing for the use of wet-on-wet applications in housepainting, but the practice is not widespread.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wet-On-Wet Painting techniques