Sara Sedgwick’s Oil Painting Boot Camp is a four-part series of videos and instruction on alla prima oil painting with a primary focus on still life. Alla prima, an Italian phrase meaning “at the first,” is a wet-on-wet technique where paint is applied directly on wet paint without allowing previous layers to dry. Made popular by the Impressionists who painted outside and therefore had to move quickly to capture the light and shadows before they changed, alla prima involves quick, full strokes, and direct application of color. It is the antithesis of masters of realism like Vermeer who built up layers of tonal values and then applied a color wash at the end.
The full duration of the class, which is comprised of four sections—1. How to Mix a Palette (35 minutes), 2. Twisted Twenties (113 minutes), 3. Stroke Economy (58 minutes) and 4. Alla Prima Painting (about 2 hours)—is five hours and 37 minutes. Kara Bullock’s website is easy to use, the videos are professionally lit and well edited. You receive no feedback unless you join the Kara Bullock Art Community of Facebook. I would probably say I spent an equal amount or more outside of class doing the homework, and I found it well worth doing.
Sara espouses the “a painting a day” philosophy and the importance of focusing on one method or style of art or design and only doing that for awhile to master that process. I concur with her both from the standpoint that, just as a practice, doing something daily is far more powerful in terms of skill building and habit forming than doing it once a week or every so often, and because the only way to master something is to put in the time.
There were many things I loved about this class, and for those who want to not only learn the basics of alla prima but also who could benefit from overcoming the struggle with preciousness, I recommend it wholeheartedly. The stroke count and twisted twenties exercises both serve to loosen you up and plunge you back into painting if you’ve been away from it for awhile.
Stroke Count Exercise
Green Apple. Clockwise from upper left: 25 strokes, 20 strokes, 15 strokes, and 10 strokes each. Palette: cobalt blue, titanium white, cadmium yellow, Alizarin red..
I have to admit that when Sara said that fewer brush strokes would result in a better painting, I was skeptical, but in looking at my apple studies, I can see that the 10 stroke apple is far superior to the 15 stroke which is superior to the 20 stroke and so on because I was forced to make better and better strategic decisions with each round of more limited strokes. I was also forced to see the bigger value areas and not nitpick my way into distinguishing if there were slightly lighter areas within darker areas that clearly muddy the final image.
Twisted Twenties
Pomegranate.. Palette: cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, alizarin red, titanium white.
Twisted Twenties involves setting a timer for twenty minutes, rotating the still life around, and then painting it again. Although you could choose several things and arrange them for this, simpler is better because time is deliberately limited to push you to see and execute quickly. Since one of the pitfalls of alla prima painting is that overworking your picture can lead to muddied colors, this exercise gets you to be sparing, thoughtful, and immediate in your decision making and approach.
The brilliance of the Twisted Twenties and Stroke Count exercises is that both impose limitations which are necessary for great creative work. Indeed, more is not always better, and often the best work is born out of limiting some element whether it be time, stroke count, color choices, theme, style, etc. I also learned some art hacks like the fact that you can save your palette in the freezer to extend the life of your paint.
Final Exercise: Alla Prima Painting
Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Palette: Torrit Gray, Payne’s Gray, Lead White, Mars Black
The final exercise is to complete an alla prima painting. Sara introduces some solid questions about what makes a good still life and offers steps to take if you think the composition isn’t working. She also talks bout switching primary sets if you think different primaries are more appropriate for your still life, how to prevent color muddying, and how to diagnose problems as you go along.. In this lesson, she does instruct you to do a little bit of underpainting to block in the values before you get too involved with color. I chose to create a triptych for this, and found that all the limitations she imposed during the palette mixing and warm-up exercises honed my skills to realize my artistic vision.
My only criticism of the class is that too much of the class is spent watching the instructor mix paint. The entire first section is about how to mix your own palette and the aesthetic benefits of doing so. This is highly valuable and contains very salient tidbits. However, in the Twisted Twenties videos, she spends 21 of 42 minutes in the first video mixing her palette and 9 minutes in the second 30 minute video doing so again. At a certain point, watching someone mix paint is only slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry. Once I’ve seen it, I understand it. I don’t need to experience it over and over again. Especially in a course like this where I can watch the videos anytime I desire. That said, overall, I found the class educational, beneficial to my artistic development, and more important, fun.