NEXT SESSION: JULY 3:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: As mentioned in orientation, please direct all inquiries about the Alla Prima Challenges to: allaprimachallenges@gmail.com.
This week’s challenge: The Story Teller II
The Storyteller 2: Communicating Narrative Through Compressed Perception
Congratulations on reaching the final step of this year’s journey. After 19 weeks of perceptual tests, material exploration, and visual problem-solving under tight constraints, we close the series with a challenge that brings together everything we’ve practiced—and asks you to add some narrative to the effort.
This week’s alla prima challenge is called The Storyteller 2—a 45-minute exercise that asks you to move beyond representation into visual narration. Your task is to construct a single image that communicates a story, process, or transformation, using the perceptual tools developed throughout this series.
But this isn’t just a composition—it’s a moment loaded with intent. You’re working with limited time and limited strokes to convey sequence, implication, or consequence. Can you show cause and effect in a single glance? Can you imply what came before—or what might come next?
This challenge is a convergence point. It tests your ability to prioritize visual information, maintain clarity under abstraction, and anchor meaning through form. Your story could be literal or metaphorical, symbolic or observational—but it must be coherent under compression.
You’ll need to balance recognition with suggestion, detail with economy. Think in terms of hierarchical emphasis, compositional weight, and the narrative utility of objects, gestures, and relationships. What must the viewer know immediately? What can unfold upon second glance?
The trick? Avoid visual clutter. Focus your decisions on what best serves the story. Value, color, edge, and proportion should not just describe—they should inform. This is where perceptual control becomes conceptual delivery.
Storyteller II
- Depict a story, process, or transformation. This can be literal, metaphorical, or symbolic.
- Time Limit: 45 minutes
- Premixing allowed!**
- 5-stroke palette draw rule in effect
Strategic Reminders:
- Anchor recognition first. All abstraction, atmosphere, or symbolism relies on the legibility of key elements.
- Think in hierarchies: What’s the main narrative cue? What are the supporting elements? Use value, chroma, and edge to prioritize.
- Pictorial sequencing: Can a moment contain motion? Can an object imply change? Consider how temporal tension can live inside a frozen frame.
- You don’t need high detail. You need clarity of visual language.
Suggestions to Spark Ideas:
- A broken object and its former wholeness,
- Cause and consequence in one composition,
- A process interrupted or just completed (e.g., pouring, lighting, assembling),
Closing Thought:
This is your opportunity to apply not just what you’ve practiced—but what you understand. The choices you make here will reflect your fluency in material handling, perceptual prioritization, and conceptual intent. This is the final pressure test—and you’ve been training for it all year.
As always, I can’t wait to see what narratives unfold on canvas this week!
GOOD LUCK!
ALLA PRIMA GALLERY FOLDER FOR CHALLENGE #20:
Again, any completed alla prima exercise can be sent to: allaprimachallenges@gmail.com. We will add your effort to the appropriate Dropbox folder.