Wet-on-wet
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Wet-on-wet, or alla prima (Italian, meaning at first attempt), is a painting technique, used mostly in oil painting, in which layers of wet paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. This technique requires a fast way of working, because the work has to be finished before the first layers have dried. It may also be referred to as 'direct painting' or the French term au premier coup (at first stroke).
Wet-on-wet painting goes right back to the origins of oil painting, and was used by several of the best Early Netherlandish painters in parts of their pictures, such as Jan van Eyck in the Arnolfini portrait, and Rogier van der Weyden. In traditional painting methods new layers were applied to most parts of a painting only after allowing the previous layer to completely dry. This drying process could vary from several days to several weeks, depending on the thickness of the layer. Work done using "alla prima" can be carried out in one or more sessions -depending of the type of paints used and their respective drying time- but it is mostly done in one session or "sitting" only.
Since the mid-19th century the use of commercially produced pigments in portable tubes has facilitated rapid and on-the-spot painting. Impressionists like Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, realists like John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri and George Bellows, and the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning have each in different ways exploited the potential for fluid energy in the application of oil paints.
