These panels were painted with my pigments bought some time ago for my mural paintings. The designs are inspired by decorative woodcarving. These are painted on roof-tiles. Andrew Gathercole`s workshop really helped me get started up in several ways, where to buy the materials, where to find frescoes both ancient and modern. Since then, I have visited several churches with interesting frescoes, then I bought lime locally,and studied lists of lime tolerant colours, sorting out any possible supplies I had in stock. Ordering from suppliers has been a problem as no-one on the phone can answer any queries, they only process orders. One of my queries is .. if a colour e.g. viridian green is known as lime- OK, can I then buy that pigment, cheap and cheerful, at a local shop, or will it only be OK if it is ordered just from the specialists who OK`d this colour?
How I got started with frescoes
We were in California with our son Paul and wife Catherine ,and just spent two days plastering a barn with mud and lime plaster (as you do). We were packing to leave in twenty minutes and I said to the barn owner "This is lime fresco material, Wow ,if I had some powder pigments I could paint a fresco." "I have!" he said and he ran back into his house and came out with a box of pigments. I mixed them in bowls.
He found me an old board and a trowel, I slapped on lime plaster and tried to paint on the wet surface with a hog bristle painting brush. Hopeless! It was like painting on custard. I had minutes to go. With force I sprayed the paint on the wet surface well with colour. I looked closer and the force of my painting stroke had created little cups in the soft plaster, each lined with strong colour. Yessss!.
I washed brush and charged it with the next colour. By now I was painting "Wind in the grasses" I called it. I picked up a slender stick and added linear strokes. The others were packing the car. "Time to go" they called. I sat my first fresco flat in the back and we were off.
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