Ébauche or Lay-ins in Plein-Air ‘Alla Prima’ Oil Painting – Paul Cézanne
Ébauche or Lay-ins in Plein-Air ‘Alla Prima’ Oil Painting
Large size Oil on Canvas
81 x 65 cm (approx 32 x 26 inches)
© The Artist.
Work in Progress (WIP) – lay in stage two
Large size Oil on Canvas
81 x 65 cm (approx 32 x 26 inches)
© The Artist.

Example of a lay-in prioritising line
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne left a lot of ‘unfinished’ paintings ? weither they were abandoned or left aside or just never pushed to resolution or abandoned in a state of despiar by the artist we will never realyy know. His diaries tell us not. However these half-finished paintings are a great testimony to his working process. They taught me to paint in oils, simply put. I used to spend hours looking at them in wonder. Looking for clues too. What a great gift he left to us artists who follow behind.
A lay-in has alot of painterly charm because at this stage, you aren’t concerned with descriptive details & little, fiddly fine brush work. You are roughing-in the overall masses.
A lay-in in oil should follow the ‘fat over lean’ rule (thick paint over thin paint). Note how diluted with turps the paint is (a great advantage of plein-air is that the artist isn’t intoxicated with fumes whilst shut-up in an atelier).
For this large size painting, working quickly with the changing light en plein-air, the surface was fairly quickly covered with the intial lay-in.
The lay-in phase comes after the conception phase (where you have the idea or see the painting in your mind’s eye) & the composition stage (where you work out what goes where & how if fits together).
I find that getting the major relationships between the colours painted early on in the lay-in stage is essential to how a painting fits together as a whole, as a set of harmonics. It also estabilshes the quality of the light, the timbre & feel of the place. Getting this clear early on speeds up the painting process, which in plein-air painting can be something of a race against the sun’s movement… if I had a euro for every time I’ve heard ” the light’s changed”.
In a lay-in, you kind of bring the whole painting-up at the same time all together, rather than finishing a bit here then finishing another over there (as much as is possible). Try & keep an eye on how the whole fits together. For such large oil paintings, done in one session ‘alla prima’ en plein-air, on location, on the spot, you really do need to have an idea of how the painting will/might unfold.
NOTE : Not every painting unfolds in the same way. Just as in cooking, different meals, different recipes require different approaches.
![[karst500.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_weTiHwuZsVo/ScO9jsNwZtI/AAAAAAAACMM/l-hVFylJmjc/s1600/karst500.jpg)
‘Karst Landscape’ – unfinished state
Large Oil on Canvas
81 x 65 cm (approx 32 x 26 inches)
© The Artist
Great to see this process Adam. So this is all in one session, do I understand? Do you ever go back again another day to finish up, or back in the studio? I really enjoy these rocky landscapes of yours.
hi cathy
how nice to hear from you 🙂
re: rocky – still not certain if they’re not better in wc? spring now, so I’ll be moving on to pastures new.
re:alla-prima – well no, not entirely, because there is a bit of retouching in the studio the next day. do remember these are large paintings, not small minature postcards. maybe they’d be better done in two sessions? difficult for me to find two free days just to paint.
The watercolours have a different quality of light, and texture which conveys rock really well – I like them both!
I know well the problem of finding whole days at a time to paint 🙁