Al Fresco Art Club, December 13, 2020: Painting A La Prima Digitally

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Painted on one layer using Procreate’s round brush with pressure turned off

Today’s Al Fresco Art Club celebrated nine months of not meeting al fresco. Oregon’s environment forces us to seek shelter from summer-long wild fire smoke and air quality measuring above 200. The snow and rain are benign by comparison, but they drive us inside all the same. Beautiful Oregon seems to have taken a vacation for the past year. Oh! Where have you gone, Oregon?

This week we continued to practice al la prima-style digital painting. We restrict ourselves to one layer and one brush. We’re encouraged to paint over errors instead of using an eraser or the Ctrl-Z key, just as we would do with traditional oil painting. We also avoid using selections to warp or scale the image. Having clearly defined boundaries is a good thing. Sometimes the errors and distortions are actually the reality I’m trying to capture.