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ALLA PRIMA –
Sara Reeve
Alla prima painting is tricky but Sara Reeve has you covered. Her joyous explanations are just what you need to master the technique.
Reference Image
Model: Nomi McLeod
@nomivailamcleodart
Images from: Draw Brighton 
www.patreon.com/c/DrawBrighton or
www.draw-brighton.co.uk
Materials
Paper or Canvas
Set of Oil paints – Titanium
White, Yellow Ochre,
Cadmium Red, Ivory Black
Selection of brushes
Palette
Solvent
Cloth / Rags
Find these items at cassart.co.uk
The Ground
Before starting, cover your canvas in a ground colour of your choice (eg. burnt umber) using a large brush. To create the ground wash, mix with a solvent to produce a dilute solution. This will give you an interesting background to work from and provides a mid-tone for when you begin painting.
Top tip – Recycled glass fridge shelves are an ideal option for a palette to mix your paint.
Underpainting
Use a medium sized brush and a darker colour than the ground wash to plot out the key areas of your model’s face onto the canvas – nose, lips, eyes, shoulders etc. Don’t forget to include a neck to avoid a floating head. Ensure you mix solvent into your paint to keep it thin. This will allow you to make light and loose exploratory marks that you can correct as you go.
Top tip – Observe, respond and continually adjust marks but remember to be kind to yourself and don’t get too bogged down with creating an exact likeness. More drawing practise will help you to achieve likeness.
Tonal Map
Working from darkest tones to lightest, create a tonal map that you can build colour onto in the next step. Do this by identifying the various tones you can see in the model’s face and indicate these areas. For example, use darker marks to indicate the darker areas such as the hair.
Top tip- Alla Prima painting is a good exercise to force you to resolve a painting in a single session.
Blocking in Colour
Use a limited palette (titanium white, yellow ochre, cad red and ivory black) to create the next layer by adding colour to the painting. Begin to block in the biggest shapes and darkest tones you can see for example, block in the background and hair first.
Once you have blocked in the darkest tones, start painting in mid-tones. Mid-tones include the shadows you can see under the model’s neck. If you observe a certain colour on the sitter’s face, for example, there may be purples under the eyes and pinks on the cheek and chin, place this paint on those areas. Think of these as colour notes that will help you identify parts of the face in amongst the bigger flesh tones
Wet on wet stage
At this point you really begin the technique of alla prima painting. You should have lots of tonal brush marks on your canvas and it will remind you of a patchwork quilt. You now need to apply paint between the patches of paint already on the canvas to blend them together. Use gradient tones between the colours you have already blocked in. Do not over work the paint with what is already on the canvas. You can blend slightly but if you over mix the paints on the canvas, the colours will begin to look muddy.
Top tip – You can avoid muddiness by being decisive about the marks you are making. Short flats are synthetic brushes that are very versatile and allow you to place paint decisively when working alla prima.
Finishing touches
Add in any small details you may have noticed in your model’s face, this can be anything from highlights in their eyes to nose rings. Avoid being bogged down with intricate details. For example, use an abstract loose cross hatch to give the impression of a geometric tattoo.
Top tip – The whites of our eyes are not actually white, so be careful with your colour selection and veer towards using off white or beige for eye highlights.
