Wet-on-wet

Wet-on-wet is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. This technique requires a fast way of working, because the art work has to be finished before the first layers have dried.

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. [National Gallery Catalogues: "The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings" by Lorne Campbell, 1998, ISBN 1-85709-171-X] 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.

Since the mid-1800s 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.

Popular culture

In recent years the wet-on-wet practice has become well-known as the primary method of painting used by such television artists as Bill Alexander and Bob Ross. Since lighter colors will usually mix with darker colors if laid over top of them while wet, the technique relies on painting from light colors up. This gives the painting a soft look, and allows the colors to be blended to the painter's desire. Since no drying period is required, full paintings (requiring at most only a few minutes of detail work after the main work is dry) can be produced in a short period of time – Alexander and Ross could produce an entire landscape in under half an hour on their respective television shows, "The Magic of Oil Painting" and "The Joy of Painting".

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