What The Hell Is Wet On Wet Painting? Tweet

I mentioned in my last post that my preferred painting style is for layers rather than wet on wet. WTF does that mean?

Essentially it means this over this .

Though in my case that's not strictly true. I'll get back to that in more detail at a later date.

Wet on wet then is the more modern approach of doing a painting in one sitting. It's the way the Impressionists worked. Direct painting. Alla prima - at the first (go). It's the 'daily painting' / 'painting a day' way. Sit down, don't mix the colours too much beforehand, use the paint more or less the consistency it is straight from the tube and go for it. Very quick. No time for fussing. Very smooth edges with plenty of blending. Any fine detail needs to be added on later after the painting has dried. And the general rule of thumb, if wet paint is going on top of wet paint (as opposed to next to it) is to work from light colours upwards to dark colours. That is, to start with the light colours and get darker.

The problem I find with wet on wet is that everything's wet! It all runs in together. I like to blend some parts and not others. I like to build up textures from underneath. To paint smoothly over sections. To dig in and scrape back sometimes. To play with the different effects possible at different stages of dryness. I like more options and more control.

So wet on wet doesn't really suit me. However, I was quite taken by the way one can belt out paintings using the technique. That was eye opening. And quite fetching.

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