Wet on Dry Alla Prima Watercolor Painting Technique

Wet on Dry Alla Prima Watercolor Painting Technique

Video lesson by Vladimir London

In this video lesson, you will discover how to paint in watercolor using the 'wet-on-dry alla prima' painting technique.

I will continue painting the same object – an apple – this time in alla prima. First, I will make a quick sketch in graphite pencil on watercolor paper. Alla prima is an Italian term which means 'from the first attempt'. It is a fast and efficient way of making a painting. This is especially true for watercolor, because it is a fast-drying medium.

Before applying paint on paper, I mix the necessary color on the palette. When it comes to painting in watercolor, there is no one strict rule of how to use the alla prima technique. An artist may start with the light areas of an artwork, and then continue to darker tonal values. It is also possible to develop the whole artwork simultaneously, painting its different areas in quick succession without finishing any particular places before others. If you follow this method, the whole artwork develops at the same time. But the technique which I will show you in this video lesson is a bit different. Because I am painting just one small object – an apple – it is also totally acceptable to develop the artwork, painting it bit by bit, in the full strength, gradually expanding the painted area. As I move from one part of the apple to another, I have to mix many different colors and apply very different tones from light to dark, which lie quite close to each other on the apple.

Because an apple is a very simple object, it is not that difficult to see the difference in colors and tonal values, and to depict the gradation of hues and tones from the first attempt. Of course, in order to carry out this technique, I already have a mental picture of how this artwork should look when it is finished, and the whole range of tones from very light to very dark ones. Such a feeling of tonal values comes with experience. For example, should I start painting light areas of an apple with darker paints than needed, I could easily get into trouble, as darker areas of an apple would have to be painted with even darker paints, in order to keep the balance between light and darker values. By that time, I may run out of the tonal range that would look appropriate for such an apple. In other words, such a picture would end up looking too dark. Going the other way, making the picture too light would be much easier to fix, by simply adding darker paints whilst the paper surface is still wet. However, this would be no longer be 'wet-on-dry alla prima'; instead, it would be another painting technique – 'wet-into-wet alla prima'. This brings us back to the main feature of the watercolor painting technique that I am using right now. It is nicely summarized by its name: 'wet-on-dry alla prima'. This literally means that wet paint is applied onto the dry paper surface, in the full strengths from the first attempt. So, the paint has to be mixed to accurately portray the desired color and tone, and to be applied in the right place. This particular painting technique reminds me of an old art joke: "painting great artworks is so easy – all you need to do is just take the right color and put it in the right place". This is all that I need to tell you about the 'wet-on-dry alla prima' painting technique. Of course, there is so much more than what this joke actually tells. Alla prima is the most advanced technique – above all, it demands proficient painting skills, good control of paint flow, ability to simultaneously judge tonal values and colors, good knowledge of art materials, and planning the sequence of painting steps well in advance. All of these elements only come with knowledge and practice.

Painting 'wet-on-dry alla prima' has its advantages, because it does not require wetting the whole surface of watercolor paper before starting an artwork. This means that there is less time pressure than when painting on a fast-drying wet paper surface. Of course, you have to paint quickly, before the borders of previous brush strokes become dry. But it is much easier to control than to keep the whole paper sheet wet. Unlike oil paints, watercolor is a fast-drying medium; that is why there is a limited time frame to paint alla prima before the whole artwork becomes dry. When the paper dries, you can still continue with watercolor painting. However, this would cease to be alla prima as you would have to apply paints in layers on top of each other, in order to increase color saturation and tonal values. Painting in transparent layers is called 'glazing' – it is an indirect method of watercolor painting.

The main key of alla prima technique is to keep an artwork fresh-looking and to finish it in one session. A session can take one or two hours for example, which is enough for a loose-style impressionistic artwork. That makes alla prima the technique of choice for artists working in plain air – or in other words, painting nature whilst being outdoors. When painting the landscape in alla prima, an artist would typically start with light washes for light, then sky, water and the ground, then painting vegetation and other objects in a distant background. Afterwards, an artist would continue with the middle ground, finishing with foreground objects and human figures.

In the Watercolor Academy video course, you will see several video lessons on how to paint landscapes in alla prima...

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