Alla Prima painting workshop

Posted by: Adrian Morgan

The two days of instruction will be dealing with a full colour palette. Learning how to paint wet-into-wet and mixing colour and tone. Alla Prima painting is a loose spontaneous style of painting based on traditional techniques. The aim is to complete the painting in one day while the paint is still fresh and malleable.
The principles taught in the workshop can be applied to any subject matter including figurative, still life or outdoor landscape painting.

Teaching Style

Beginners and experienced people are welcome. Understanding is key and nobody gets left behind. Each student will be helped until they grasp the principles of the lesson.
Louis believes in leading from the front, demonstrating each step in front of the group and on students’ work if needed.

Louis Smith studied Classical Art in Florence and has exhibited his work in the BP Portrait Award and Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

The workshop will cover

Wash drawing going straight into shaping the masses with some tips on how to measure and the proportions of the face.
Colour Mixing – Pre-mixing some general tones to be used in the portrait.
Colours of the face - how to see and emphasize the colour in the face.
Colour Theory – The difference between warm and cool colour, how colours react to each other.
Blocking in – Blocking in the general field colours of face, hair, clothes and background.
Refining the shapes of mass colour and tone
Working wet-on-wet – How to blend one colour into another and broken colour techniques
Materials Deal = £20

Organisation is a challenge faced by most beginners. The studio is equiped with work stations so that everything is at hand. The students will be using the same paints and canvas that the teacher uses for demonstration eliminating a number of problems that students have when they bring their own paints and canvas.

Each workstation includes;

Palette
Palette knife

Medium holder
Medium
Thinners
Prepared Canvas

Kitchen roll
Paints (cadmium yellow, cadmium orange, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, violet, phthalo blue, phthalo green, burnt umber and white)

Cost

2 day Alla Prima Workshop Course = £120. To register for the course, fill in your details on the website at http://louissmithart.com/art-classes-manchester/portrait-painting-classes/ and pay a 20% deposit below. Then pay the balance on the day. An email will be sent to confirm your attenadance the week before the start date.