Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Alla Prima

Pensile Road
Acrylic on Paper
19cm x 19cm (7.5" x 7.5")

"Alla prima" is Italian for "at first" or "at once". In oil painting terminology it means completing a painting in one sitting, applying the paint wet-on-wet. It results in pictures that are spontaneous and expressive. It is also the subject of Lesson 39 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler.

Phillip suggests placing the paint carefully and being forthright in your mark making. The idea is to get the paint down and leave it. The more you mess around with paint, the muddier the colours become. By putting the paint down and leaving it, you retain the freshness of the colours and the expressiveness of your original marks.

I cross referenced Phillip's guidance with advice from: 

• Carol Marine's book Daily Painting
• Ian Roberts' YouTube channel Mastering Composition 

All three agree on the importance of slowing down and painting mindfully – making sure you have mixed the right colour and you are putting it exactly where you want it.

I am cutting myself some slack with this picture because it is only my second painting in acrylics. I am making life additionally difficult by trying to work out how to use acrylics like oil paints. Currently, I am struggling with balancing thickness and opacity. I’ve thought about painting some experimental swatches to learn more about how the paint behaves, but painting pictures is more fun and helps to practice other skills as well.

The Creative License

20. Make It Yours
The Creative License
Gouache & Watercolour Pencil
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
16.0cm x 16.0cm (6.25" x 6.25")

 On January 1, I started Danny Gregory’s course The Creative License

4. Childs Play
The Creative License
Graphite Pencil
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
28.0cm x 20.0cm cm (11" x 8")

The course is billed as 

Your invitation to reconnect with your creativity. It’s not about mastering technical skills or creating flawless masterpieces. It’s about discovering the artist inside you and giving yourself permission to create—without fear, judgment, or expectations.

5. Reinventing Our Tools
The Creative License
Watercolour, Ink and Wax Crayon
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
20.0cm x 28.0cm cm (8" x 11")

Danny based the course on his book of the same name (The Creative License). He expanded the concepts from the book into 31 lessons, one for each day of the month.

11. It's Complicated
The Creative License
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
28.0cm x 20.0cm cm (11" x 8")

The lessons are about:

• Overcoming the fear and self-doubt about making art.
• Experimenting, trying new things and embracing joyful, messy, playfulness.
• Integrating creativity into your daily life.

14. Scent & Art
The Creative License
Watercolour, Gouache, Marker and Wax Crayon
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
28.0cm x 20.0cm cm (11" x 8")

The course was a revitalising start to the year. Everything was going well until the 29th, when I slipped on some icy decking, tore a hamstring (badly), blacked an eye and gave Elaine an unpleasant shock when she found me unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. It’s taken a while, but I'm recovering and finished the last few exercises.

29. Integration Challenge
The Creative License
Gouache
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
16.0cm x 16.0cm (6.25" x 6.25")

The pictures on this post are my favourite pieces from the course. The one at the top and this last one are loose copies of Kurt Jackson pictures. They are significant because they don’t look like anything I’ve created before. They indicate a direction I want to explore.

Foliage

In The Woods At Night
Watercolour on Paper
16.5cm x 24.5cm (6.5" x 9.5")

Foliage is the fifth topic in the Tree Techniques chapter of Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice. 

In one of her examples she shades around some leaves to make them pop out of the picture. This reminded me of a layering technique John Lovett explains in his Textures, Techniques & Special Effects for Watercolor.  He uses negative painting to create the impression of layers of objects stacking on top of each other. Your start with a light wash, then you paint everything that’s not in the top layer with a slightly darker wash, then everything that’s not in the top 2 layers with a darker wash again, and so on. Once you have built up the layers, you go back to add texture and details.

The picture at the top of the post is based on 8 layers. Before I started painting, I painstakingly worked out the shape of what I was painting in each layer. 

In The Woods At Night - Layer 3

This is the third layer. The black is the area that I am not painting over. 

In The Woods At Night - Layer 4

This is the 4th layer. You paint less and less in each layer. Each time you paint an object it gets darker and recedes further into the shadows. I've been meaning to try this for years, so it's exciting to finally give it a try.

Happy Christmas 2024

 

Christmas Tree 2024
Ink and Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
14.0cm x 8.9cm (5.5" x 3.5")

Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for 2025

This is our Christmas Tree. It is 48cm (19") tall from the bottom of the pot. We can't get at our usual decorations (it's a long story), so we are down sizing. Sorry for not posting much this year. Normal service should be resumed in 2025.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Oil Painting

Sunflowers
Acrylic on Paper
23cm x 14.5cm (9" x 5.75")

Spoiler - This isn’t an oil painting or a landscape. 

Lesson 38 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about oil painting. Philip provides a beginner’s guide to oils and suggests a materials list.

I am wary of using oil paints because of the toxic fumes from their traditional solvents. Research reveals a lot of conflicting opinions about the practicality of non toxic oil painting. In the end, I went with my gut instinct, which is to paint in acrylics, but to try to create paintings that look like oil paintings. I am planning to use acrylics for the remaining lessons in Chapter 7.

In this painting, I'm trying to emulate the alla prima approach from Carol Marine's her book Daily Painting.

Things didn't go to plan and I had improvise, but the painting is not a total disaster. It was a great learning experience and I'm looking forward to the next one. Lesson 39 is Alla Prima painting, so I'm going to find a simple landscape to paint. 

You can finds a playlist of 4 videos about this painting on my YouTube channel (My First Acrylic Painting). 

Distant and Background Trees

Background Trees - Claudia Nice
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
11cm x 9cm (4.5" x 3.5")

Distant and Background Trees are the sixth and seventh topic in the Tree Techniques chapter of Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor by Claudia Nice. It’s a few months since I’ve picked up Claudia’s book. An exercise from Liz Steel’s SketchingNow Watercolour on Location course inspired me to return. By chance, I’ve picked it up at almost the same point as I left off.

In an exercise about common landscape elements, Liz suggests studying how other artists paint and draw the subject. The first topic on the list is trees, providing the perfect opportunity to revisit Claudia's book.

Distant Trees - Claudia Nice
Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
15cm x 14cm (6" x 5.5")

I made some notes about Claudia’s treatment of distant and background trees and tried to copy a couple of her examples. 

Middle Distance Trees - John Lovett
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14cm x 11cm (5.5" x 4.5")

I also looked at advice from John Lovett. I studied his suggestions about trees in Textures, Techniques & Special Effects for Watercolor and Getting Started and tried to copy some of his examples.

Tree - John Lovett
Watercolour
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
15cm x 14cm (6" x 5.5")

I’m pleased to get back to Claudia’s book and intend to continue learning from her content.

SketchingNow – Edges

 

Cakes – Hard v Soft Edges
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

In March, I joined a group run through of Liz Steel's SketchingNow Edges course. I then fractured my shoulder and couldn't sketch for over a month, so I finished way behind the rest of the group. 

Woodchester Park Boathouse
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

(If you watch The Crown, you may recognize this building as the Gordonstoun school changing rooms.)

The Edges course is about creating depth and interest in your sketches by developing an understanding of edges. This involves recognizing whether the edges you see are a change in plane or just a change in colour and whether the edges are hard or soft or strong or weak. Once you understand the edges you are seeing, you can then decide how to represent them and manipulate them to make your sketches more exciting. There are four lessons each with an indoor and outdoor exercise.

Fruit Bowl
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

I’ve done the course before in 2018 (see SketchingNow Edges), but I've learned a lot more this time through. 

Local Larder
Watercolour & Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
14.0 x 20.3cm cm (5.5" x 8.0")

As a next step I've joined a group run through of Liz's SketchingNow Watercolour on Location course  which started on the 19th of June, but I'm already behind and rushing to catch up because of recovering from this injured shoulder.

Dresser
Ink
Stillman & Birn Beta Series Sketchbook
20.3 x 14cm cm (8.0" x 5.5")

You can see a few more sketches in a video on my YouTube channel SketchingNow Edges - What Have I Learnt?