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.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.

The art word "wet-on-wet" means exactly what it appears to -- painting onto paint that is still wet. The other option accessible to you is to paint onto dry paint, know as working wet-on-dry. Quite dissimilar results are achieved with each approach.

Painting wet-on-wet means that you can blend or mix colors as you are painting, directly on the canvas. This is useful for painting clouds as it means you can generate soft edges easily. The one thing you can't do painting wet-on-wet than you can do painting wet-on-dry is to construct up color through glazing.

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.

Wet-on-wet is a painting technique that is well-known as being the primary method of painting used by 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. Due the fact that no drying period is required, full paintings can be produced in a short period of time - Ross could produce an entire landscape in under half an hour on his television show, The Joy of Painting.