This ramrod is thinner than the one used to clean the pipe’s smoke duct. It is only a braided wire, but you can use it to prepare pieces of coal, either bought or fired yourself, for drawing.The willow vittles have a core inside, which before firing resembled a sponge, because its function was to transport […]
Sizing the canvas
The canvas consists of fibres that do not like contact with oil. If the oil gets into the fabric, then – over the years – the canvas in that spot simply rots and begins to fall apart. Therefore, it is necessary to apply a new finish to the fabric, for – by decatising the store-bought […]
Tadeusz Piotrowski’s School
In Olsztyn, I joined a private school that was founded in 1981 by Tadeusz Piotrowski (in the photo). Piotrowski himself graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. At his school – named after Cennino Cennini – we mainly studied the technologies of the Old Masters of painting.Tadeusz kept […]
Unusual rust
Pure glazing pigment. Intense and light-resistant. One of the oldest preserved in prehistoric paintings, which only confirms its durability. Iron oxide, that is another shade of rust. Just add oil, mix and get started…
Sanguina: From Rock to Paint
The lumps were quite large for a pigment bought by weight, some even larger than a walnut. On the surface, sanguine seems inaccessible because it is as hard as rock. However, all it takes is a stonecutter’s hammer and the crushed lumps become lumps, rubble, aggregate, sand and finally dust. Now more gritting, oil, gritting, […]
Linseed oil thickened in the sun
Only for spectators with strong nerves. This is what the ‘undercarriage’ foam with the crap looks like at the end of a sunny day.The nineteenth day of thickening linseed oil in the sun.The sun separates the “sebaceous substances” between the linseed oil layer and the water. (Max Doerner calls this nastiness)The bark, which cannot find […]
Armature
The armature is such an invisible spine for the clay sculpture, sometimes with crosses hanging on wires. Their role is to keep the clay where it needs to be. Do it wrong – and suddenly a cheek or a breast, thigh or buttock falls off because they had nothing to hold on to.To paint, you […]
Cement board
Oil on a cement slab? Or coal?Cement board is a substrate I like because it is stable, but unfortunately it has to weigh something. This invention of recent years is made up of three components: cement, water and cotton fibre (responsible for the reinforcement). I use 3.5 mm thick slabs for the 120 × 80 […]
My neighbour crashed my system
My neighbour crashed my system. She is a professional.The oldest paintings by early artists are tens of thousands of years old. All of them – those from caves in Indonesia or South Africa, and those from Spain or France – have in common the use of natural earth pigment, or varieties of rust. Specifically: ochre […]
I lack the courage
Normally I have no problem treating sanguine, malachite, coal or anything else with a hammer. Since the holidays, when ezo.minerals sent me this pigment, I like this lump so much that I can’t take the hammer in my hand… For centuries, Volkonskoite has only been mined in one place. The pigment comes from the Urals, […]