peintures

little series of paintings: how a historical oil painting is made

On the left side the dutch way with a bright cray ground shining through all the layers, on the right the italian way with a greenish ground, verdaccio.  Note that Gesina actually made 12 paintings instead of just photographing the same one 12 times

step 1: bare wood (oak in this case)

step 2: oak degreased and covered with hot hare glue

step 3: grounded with seven layers of a hot cray and animal skin glue mixture, lightly craped to even out

step 4: on the right an imprimatura verdaccio, greenish ground is added in the italian way, tempera grassa.  On the left the white ground is left untouched, dutch way. Underdrawing with a carton (to get the same underdrawing on each panel)

step 5: the underdrawing is fixed with green umbra, tempera grassa

step 6: the dutch (left) side is painted with tempera, monochrome tonepainting in umbra, the italian (right) side however already has been painted with a lean oil paint, umbra for the darker tones and white for the lighter

step 7: finally, the first ground layer! Pigments, oil, bees wax
Note how the layers are transparent

step 8: a fatter layer. Fatter means for example adding some stand oil  to the linseed oil

step 9: last, fattest, ground layer

step 10: glazing with very transparant layers with colophony, ochre on blue and vice versa, reddish on skin

step 11: dutch clouds and italian veil also glazed on

step 12: back to tempera grassa for fine details, eyelashes and veil border