Finalizing an Alla Prima sketch

First off, SORRY for my head being in the way so much, I will change the angle in the following videos, I promise. I am still working out this setup and promise to do better!!

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After yesterday's lengthy, kind of "meta" post, let's get back to painting.

A while ago, I decided to get back into painting from life. I used to do this a lot back when I just started learning how to paint, but over the years this habit dwindled away, and I ended up not doing it at all for years.
Pretty much out of nowhere, that itch came up again, and I wanted to give it a go. While I wanted it to be a regular thing again, I really do not need yet another thing to squeeze into my days forcefully, so I also decided that I wanted to not spend too much time on those. So I figured doing one of these daily and not spending more than an hour on them would be kind of a cool little challenge, or at least a bit of a warm-up to get the day started. I also wanted to stick with a weekly theme, as I felt it would be interesting to explore one idea more extensively than a single quick painting would allow for.
After having finished the first week, I did feel, however, that I was leaving quite a bit on the table, both as far as exploration and execution are concerned. Hence, I decided to revisit each one of those alla prima paintings and to invest at least a few minutes into each one of them to get them to a more finalized stage.

It quickly turned out that doing these second passes was probably my favorite part of the process. In that first session, it basically came down to nailing that initial visual impression in a very direct manner—frankly, too quickly to really think about anything else other than mixing colors and putting them down on the panel. Having stepped away from these little paintings and coming back to them, it was really cool to notice that each of them had kind of a little "theme" going on—or, probably more accurately, there were different aspects that I focused on while I painted them without even noticing. One painting might be about edges, one about composition, one about subtle color shifts, and so on.

Now, with this painting of marshmallows, "we" are kind of late to the party, as I have already brushed up most of the paintings in week one—you can check all of them out in my store here on this website, btw (wink wink). But from now on, I'm going to document the process of these studies on a regular basis.
So, this painting decided along the way that it wanted to be about edges. Fluffy marshmallows appearing from and disappearing into the environment was the name of the game, and I was more than happy to oblige. The result of that first session was—naturally, with me being the heavy-handed brute of a painter that I am—just that: heavy-handed.
In this second session, I wanted to make sure to basically "just" recognize what each edge was doing and to emphasize that. It turned out to be a lot of fun. Modeling edges might be one of my favorite aspects of painting, as it can be achieved in so many different ways—from scrubbing in transparent glazes to modeling them with opaque blotches of paint using subtle hue shifts here and there.

Overall, I really like this little painting quite a lot. Tomorrow I'll take care of another one, which is going to be REALLY tricky for sure.

If you like, check out the full video of that second session below. I am still working out the final setup, so forgive the occasional camera shake or blurriness here and there. I will also make sure to keep my head out of the frame…as best as I can at least. It will get better as we go :)

The painting, as I said, is available in my store, so if you like it, feel free to grab it!