Alla Prima Showdown!

At the beginning of the month, the painting and drawing club at my school had their annual “Alla Prima Showdown.” Basically it’s a contest that involves a large group of people each completing a painting in 15 minutes and then afterwards being judged by our professors. There are about 4 rounds, and the winner receives a gift card to the local art store. I decided to attend although I’ve never painted alla prima before. It was lots of fun and I think I must have used about 25 dollars worth of paint just smacking it down before the time was up!

The first two rounds were still life subjects and I made it through, but the third round was a model. Although I do plenty of life drawing, I’ve never painted a live model before and honestly it looked terrible because I can’t paint decent skin yet! So I knew that I was out at that point and sure enough I was cut. The last round involved painting “nothing” which true to the word was literally an empty space. So people just made up whatever they wanted and put it down on their canvas. The judges weren’t exactly making their decisions on skill, to be fair they wanted everyone to have a shot, so they kind of made the rules up as they went along and it was hard to tell exactly what they wanted to see.

Round one was a black and white theme. You probably can't even tell whats there, but its a striped piece of fabric, silver pitcher, stuffed polar bear and a plaster cast. Various people in the background and the winner's robes.

A very colorful still life this time with a stuffed orange teddy bear, fruit and jars of paint.

I'm not posting my wretched nude, but even though I was out, I still painted this abstract for the last round where we had to paint "nothing."

But overall I had a wonderful time eating pizza, painting, talking to others and I’m glad I went. For making it as far as I did, I got a free brush so I didn’t come home empty handed. =) Two girls won and they got to have their names engraved on a silver cheese platter in the shape of a palette (heheh). Well if they have it again next year then I still have another shot to win!

We used canvas pads which are quite new to me. I really kind of like them and since I don’t plan on keeping my paintings, I think I’ll probably cut them up into smaller sizes and use them for studies.