Tag: indirect painting

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What do “indirect” and “alla prima” mean?

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I learned to paint indirectly, meaning with glazes. When I finally got around to studying with Cornelia Foss, she told me, “If this was 1950, I’d say ‘brava,’ but that is so out of date.” (To be fair, 1850 might have been more accurate, since the heyday of indirect painting was before the Impressionists.) She then proceeded to deconstruct and reconstruct my practice using alla prima technique.

There really isn’t such a strict boundary between the two. They are more like endpoints on a continuum. Most painters use techniques from both, although plein air painters almost always work alla prima. It’s faster.

I’ve included two of each kind of work here. Let’s see if you can tell which is which.

Grand Canyon, late morning, 8X16, oil on archival linenboard.

Both practices have long, uninterrupted lineages, and both are used in all media. However, they demand different kinds of thinking, even when they use the same materials. Understanding where these approaches diverge and overlap will clarify your process no matter what medium you use.

For oils and acrylics, alla prima painting starts with toning the surface. A thin neutral or warm ground kills the white, establishes a middle value, and helps the artist judge color and value accurately from the start. This step isn’t necessary in watercolor, where the paper supplies the light. Pastel painters can bypass the whole question by choosing colored paper.

In indirect painting, the process of doing the grisaille essentially lays in the tone, since it’s worked more thoroughly than in alla prima painting. That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be slipshod in alla prima painting. In both cases, the drawing, value structure, composition, and mood are worked out thoroughly before a brush ever touches the canvas.

Country path, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard, $1,275 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

In alla prima painting, large value and color masses are laid in quickly, with no details. The artist thinks in simple shapes and major value relationships, establishing lights, midtones and darks early. Alla prima depends on value accuracy far more than detail. Color is laid in directly—mixed purposefully, placed once, and left alone. Excessive blending kills freshness; fresh color over fresh color keeps the surface alive.

As the painting develops, the artist works from general to specific. Forms are refined only after the structure is solid. High-chroma accents, detail, bravura brushwork and highlights come last. Alla prima paintings fail from overworking, not underworking. As those old Ronco Rotisserie ads used to say, “Set it and forget it.”

Indirect painting, by contrast, is cumulative. It starts with a monochromatic underpainting done with lean paint and organized clearly in lights and darks. This is where the major thinking happens. If the values and shapes are wrong here, no amount of glazing will fix them. Each layer must dry completely before the artist proceeds, and depth comes from multiple thin, transparent glazes. Only at the very end is opacity used.

The Servant, oil on linen, 36X40, $4042.50 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Because each layer is allowed to dry thoroughly before the next is applied, glazes can be wiped back as needed and kept very thin. Think of it as tinting light, not covering form. Color temperature and depth are adjusted gradually—warming lights, cooling shadows, deepening darks without repainting them. You’re refining, not reinventing. Many painters finish with opaque or semi-opaque accents, combining indirect depth with direct clarity.

If you want to see that in practice, look at Rembrandt’s later self-portraits, where he uses impasto on his skin to imply the vicissitudes of age.

I’d love to have you join me for Trust the Process (making technique tell the story you want to tell), my live Zoom class designed to help you build a dependable, joyful, repeatable painting practice. We’ll dig into technique, creative decision-making and the mindset that frees you to paint with confidence. We meet Monday nights, 6-9 PM EST, starting on January 5, 2026. It’s suitable for all levels and all media. You can learn more here.

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Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Monday Morning Art School: what is alla prima painting?

Cinnamon Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Occasionally, I’ll hear someone fumble for a description of a painting and come up with plein air style. Plein air isn’t a style or technique; it simply means painting outdoors instead of in a studio. Plein air allows an artist to capture natural light and colors from direct observation, and it’s a very important movement in art history, starting with John Constable and still popular today.

What these people are groping for is the term alla prima. The confusion lies in the fact that most (although not all) plein air painters also use alla prima technique.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What is alla prima?

Alla prima (also called au premier coup, wet-on-wet, or direct painting) is a technique where the artist applies paint directly onto the canvas without letting earlier layers dry. This contrasts with indirect painting, which I describe below.

Alla prima is used mostly in oil painting, but it has its equivalent in wet-on-wet watercolor. In alla prima painting, the artist strives for fast, incisive brushwork. It requires skill to avoid making mud, and the artist must work with confidence and speed.

Alla prima has been in use since the Early Netherlandish painters. It became popularized with the rise of Impressionism, but painters as disparate as Frans Hals, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent, Chaïm Soutine and Willem de Kooning have all painted directly. Rembrandt van Rijn painted indirectly for the most part, but pointed up his work with alla prima passages.

Skylarking, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Alla prima paintings are not necessarily completed in one session, although the goal is to not let the bottom layers dry before adding more paint. There is minimal layering, and the focus is on capturing the essence of the subject with bold, confident strokes. It prioritizes expression and immediacy over meticulous detail.

This lends itself to a more expressive, loose style, with visible brushstrokes and a sense of movement. In fact, when people tell me their goal is to ‘get looser,’ what they generally mean is that they want to master alla prima painting.

Indirect painting

Before we had oil painting, we had egg tempera, encaustic, fresco and distemper, none of which lend themselves to bravura brushwork. It’s no surprise, then, that meticulous, detailed painting was the first form oil painting took. Just as tempera is layered, so was early oil painting.  

In indirect painting, the artist builds up the image with transparent layers. Each layer dries completely before the next one is applied. Indirect painting allows for a high level of control and detail. Artists can build up subtle transitions of color and light, creating a realistic, highly polished finish. Indirect painting’s great virtue is that it creates luminosity that’s impossible to achieve with direct painting. That comes, however, at the expense of brilliant color and brushwork.

Belfast Harbor, oil on archival canvasboard, 14X18, $1,275 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

Indirect paintings start with a monochromatic underpainting or grisaille: While most direct painters do this as well, the grisaille in an indirect painting is intended to show through subsequent layers. This establishes the composition and tonal values retained throughout the piece.

This base layer is allowed to dry and is followed with diluted, transparent layers of paint (called glazes). These are applied over the underpainting to modify the color. Each glaze layer dries before the next is added. White is lousy for glazing, so in a well-painted indirect painting, the light is reflecting through the paint from the grisaille layer.

Indirect painting was widely used during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. (It’s the only way to achieve true chiaroscuro.) There are artists using it today, but they’re doing so almost self-consciously, as a throwback to earlier periods in painting history.

Back in the last millennium, I learned indirect painting first, alla prima second. (Rembrandt’s style was undergoing a miniature renaissance then.) Today, there are far more modern painters pursuing alla prima than indirect painting, but one isn’t inherently better than the other. In fact, with new materials solving the age-old problems of chroma and cracking, who knows if indirect painting is due for a rebirth?   

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters