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

View fullsize

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.

Smoofy the UPS Driver and Selfie

Happy Friday. The last couple of days I’ve been sketching right after I get out of bed. These were drawn before sunrise (6 AM around here). I really like using a brush pen — you do everything in one shot, with no pencil work to get the shapes right. You just push the pedal to the metal and go for it. What you get is just what you’ve got to give. I used a brush pen that’s starting to run dry, which contributes to the grainy texture that I like.

View fullsize