Contemporary Fresco Gazette

Fresco School is proud to announce the official release of the DVD Tutorial - "FRESCO PLASTER" from their "BUON FRESCO FOUNDATIONS" video set.

"Buon Fresco Foundations" - Fresco Plaster DVD video introduces the student to foundational principles and techniques of the preparation and application of slaked lime plaster for True (Buon) Fresco Painting. Topics illustrated include the step-by-step process of plaster preparation filmed in real time without omissions. A student will be able to see exactly how long each step takes and what tools and methods each requires. iLia Anossov (fresco) guides the student by a thorough and clear demonstration of the foundations of calcium fresco plastering relevant to any size fresco.

Volume 1 "FRESCO PLASTER" is the first video in the set of 5 full length (140min each) DVDs detailing the foundational principles of Fresco Painting. Volumes 2-5, "Fresco Cartoon", "Fresco Pigments & Paint", "Fresco Painting - Verdaccio" and "Fresco Painting - Color" are planned to be released the end of the first quarter of 2009.

"Our goal is to have Frescoes being painted in every town! By very modest estimate this will take at least 10,000 artists a lifetime to accomplish."
iLia Anossov (fresco)

Fresco School Video Channel at YouTube.com presents two new fresco videos!

"Albuquerque Fresco" - video vignette of over 400 sq. feet buon fresco painted by iLia Anossov (fresco) in 1999, filmed by Emmy Award winning cinematographer Amy Marash (Bowers) for "Albuquerque Fresco - Inside Look" documentary. Also presented - "Dolphin Fresco" Parts 1 and 2 - a step-by-step journal of the Dolphin Fresco by iLia Anossov,

The Albuquerque Fresco by Ilia Anossov is a paradigm of a brilliant modern fresco. Its technique is on the Grande scale. Viewing it is reminiscent of watching a gigantic film, for this fresco incorporates not only cinematic techniques, and reminders of the most brilliant art, but also resounds of the painting of late modern artists with a flair for whimsy, like Jean Miro, and Paul Klee. At the same time there are images and techniques which evoke paintings of early masters.

Blake Gopnik
The Washington Post

PARMA, ITALY

Until about a hundred years ago, there were five godfathers of Western art: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian -- and Correggio.

Correggio, possibly the greatest artist we've almost forgotten.

Correggio: Born Antonio Allegri in about 1489, in the northern Italian hamlet of Correggio (whence his nickname), dead by 1534 and a favourite of art lovers for the next three and a half centuries. And now, virtually unknown.

When most other organizations are asking you to spend your hard earned money to spend even more later in the year, the PDPA is asking you to spend money to make more money and grow your business. The PDPA works on two fronts; one is to help the people within the industry through our initiatives and the other is to work on promoting decorative painting as a whole to new clients and other industries like the design, architectural and building trades.

Our local chapter focus is to get you in front of new customers and sell more jobs. In 2008, the PDPA Colorado chapter hosted our first professional decorative painters exhibition with brilliant success. Sheri Hunt, Colorado president, led the way with an amazing show of what decorative painting is really about.

Capitalizing on the Colorado chapterʼs momentum, the Texas chapter hosted a decorative painting exhibition at the Austin AIA headquarters under the leadership of
Catherine Oʼ Toole. With over 100 designers and Architects in attendance, members displayed their talents to the public and building trades communities. 2009 will bring more exhibitions and fundraisers designed to help our members find new clients and grow in their success as professional decorative painters.

Never mind the Da Vinci Code -- what about Michelangelo's secret messages? On the 500th anniversary of the artist's first climb up the ladder in 1508 to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a new book claims he embedded subversive messages in his spectacular frescoes -- not only Jewish, Kabbalistic and pagan symbols but also insults directed at Pope Julius II, who commissioned the work, and references to his own sexuality.

To gain experience in plastering at a minimal cost it is possible to prepare a "Practice Lime Putty" from common Type-S Hydrated Construction Lime.

Type-S Hydrated Lime is manufactured from Dolomitic Limestone (Dolomitic limestone contains 35 to 46 percent magnesium carbonate).

Being a great lime to practice fresco plaster application techniques, this lime is NOT suitable for the actual painting in fresco due to fast setting and poor adhesion/binding of colors and efforescence on the color layer. However it is widely used in construction and is available at very low cost almost at any building supplies retailer.

Los Angeles based Fresco School (FrescoSchool.org) is proud to announce it's new Video Channel at www.YouTube.com/FrescoSchool

The new channel features video clips and video tutorials on fresco painting technique. Fresco Video Channel opens with the release of the detailed video tutorial on fresco plastering tools.

"Fresco Painting is the Mother of all Arts and as the channel progresses a variety of "YouTube size" art education videos will be added, including cartoon (drawing for fresco) painting, composition, color and other disciplines of fine art, decorative art and painting with focus on applied arts." - said iLia Anossov (fresco), founder of the Fresco School

Lime Putty is the main ingredient of the buon fresco painting.

Preparation of painting surfaces for fresco involves the application of plaster of increasingly finer texture.

The first step (which in nowadays mainly done by the factories) is the heating (calcination) of marble or limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO3) at 800-900ßC to make porous lime (calcium oxide, CaO).

HEAT + CaCO3(s) ----> CaO(s) + CO2(g)

To form the plaster for fresco work, the lime is "slaked." The slaking process, which requires the addition of 2 or 3 molecules of water for each molecule of lime, yields calcium paste or lime putty, an aqueous gel of thin crystals of calcium hydroxide.

CaO(s) + H2O(l) ----> Ca(OH)2(s) + HEAT

Excess water acts as a lubricant so that the crystals slide easily over one another. Historically, lime was slaked in pits or troughs over a period of at least six months to obtain lime putty of the desired consistency. Artisans in Michelangelo's time use plaster aged for as long as ten years. Fresco plaster itself is made from the slaked lime and varying portions of sand or marble dust. Generally, walls are plastered with several layers of such fresco plaster in order of decreasing proportions and particle size of sand. Hardening of the fresco plaster on the wall includes several simultaneous physical and chemical process: the absorption of water into the wall, evaporation of water from the surface, and the carbonation of the slaked lime by carbon dioxide, CO

Ca(OH)2(s) + CO2(g) ----> CaCO3(s) + H2O(l)

Computer experts at Princeton are helping archaeologists reassemble fragments of an ancient Greek fresco.

A mighty volcanic eruption smothered the Mediterranean island of Thera in the 17th century B.C., preserving a storied trove of cultural and artistic relics from the late Bronze Age.

When it was excavated in modern times, however, much of the trove was like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Greek archaeologists have labored for decades to reconstruct striking frescoes from pieces that still boast their original creamy whites and deep reds.

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Pisa is about to acquire a new cultural attraction - a huge wall painting covering 500 square meters which will tell the story of the patron saint of Pisa, Saint Ranierus.
The artist is Luca Battini.

But the piece will have a modern day twist - locals from the town have been striking a pose in a public casting session with the hopes of being a life size figure in the new fresco.

Christian Fraser now reports from Pisa.
(see video and comments by the Fresco School on the following page)

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/215310.html

Art restorers in Pisa have found that a bacterium can do the job no chemical has managed to achieve: reveal part of a vast medieval fresco which was covered with a layer of glue during an unfortunate restoration attempt half a century ago.

Scientists from Milan University have shown that the bacterium Pseudomonas stutzeri, applied with water on cotton wool, can eat through 80% of the glue in about 10 hours.

Chunks of the 14th- and 15th-century series of frescoes at the Camposanto (cemetery) were removed for repair and restoration in the 1950s.

Part of the cemetery had been badly damaged by bombing during the second world war.

But as a result of the strappo technique, using canvas and organic glue to pull the frescoes from the wall intact, one of the paintings vanished under a layer of glue which could not be removed without damaging the surface.