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DEMONSTRATION

By Evan Woodruffe

There’s nothing like positioning yourself

in front of your subject and having to get

everything down all at once, or “alla prima” to

coin the Italian phrase. This technique is used

in Life Drawing classes, also in painting in the

environment (“en pleine aire”), but can be

applied to any work that is begun and finished

in one session.

T

aking a stripped-down studio is

advisable when painting in the

environment – you may be working

from your lap so it’s best not to complicate

matters. For this demonstration, I’m using a

primed ¼ sheet of watercolour paper, seven

colours, three brushes, a palette pad, some

paper towels and a jar of water; that’s all

you want to carry, though I confess now: it

was raining so I did this at my table.

Underpainting in liquid acrylic quickly

establishes the painting’s composition.

I used a big No16 Top-Acryl filbert

brush to knock in the main elements using

Golden High Flow Acrylic Indigo and

Sepia, and a No4 round for the tree; the

ability to wash the fluid colour quickly

over the primed paper to form a coloured

ground with no texture appealed to me,

and I have a use for the High Flow later

in the painting. The da Vinci Top-Acryl

brushes hold plenty of fluid and are also

strong enough to handle the pasty acrylic

I’ll over-paint with.

Mixing all your colours before you begin

painting allows your painting technique to be

fast and concentrated.

Golden OPEN Acrylic is particularly

good for outdoor painting, as it won’t dry

too quickly. I chose Chromium Oxide

Green, Cobalt Blue, Transparent Pyrrole

Orange (only available in the standard

Heavy Body, but they mix well together),

Raw Sienna, and Titanium White. It’s a

good idea to get all the colours mixed in

advance of painting, so you can see their

relationship to each other, and once you

get working you don’t have to stop your

eye-to-surface flow. I mix a nice warm

black from the Cobalt Blue and Transparent

Pyrrole Orange, which will form the base

for my blustery sky. Down by the horizon I

add a smidgen of Raw Sienna.