Glazing Secrets of the Old Masters

Hello everyone and welcome to another LIVE  edition here on my Channel. Today I'm going   to be talking about glazing secrets of the Old  Masters. A lot of you have written requesting   information on glazing techniques, and I decided  to do this presentation so I could talk a little   bit about the techniques that the Old Masters used.  Artists such as Caravaggio, this is a copy that I   was working with in my last class dedicated  to Caravaggio's early painting techniques.  In this class students had the opportunity to work  up a painting using historical materials and a lot   of the glazing techniques that Caravaggio employs  are techniques that other artists from this period   of art were also using. These are techniques that  were developed by painters from the north and   they evolved little by little until painters from  the Baroque Era began to use some of these same   techniques. So I'm going to be talking a little  bit about what those techniques are. I'm   also going to be talking about the pigments that  were employed by these artists to create these   very beautiful transparent passages to endow  their paintings with luminosity and richness.   Before I get started I'm going to talk a little  bit about the references. These Publications are   important because when working with some of these  techniques, it's important to use historical as   well as scientific information. I don't like to share  opinions here on the channel that are not based   on some sort of scientific evidence. So just to  begin with Caravaggio's painting technique a   wonderful publication that you could get on the  internet. Another wonderful book that I've shared   here before is "Caravaggio Works in Rome" this one  in particular, I believe is the second uh or the   second book is technique and style essays.  Another publication is the National Gallery   technical bulletin number 19. These Publications  are very important when addressing the scientific   aspects of some of these techniques. It's important  to mention that artists from the past did not have   the pigments choice that we have today. The bright  colors that we have, such as the Cadmiums or even   Lake colors that are synthetically produced in a  lab through Modern Chemistry. Artists had to ensure   to layer these colors in sequences by applying  the color in many layers artists were able to   achieve some very saturated colors. This is a very  important concept. When working with this painting   by Caravaggio I learned through the chemical  analysis and the cross sections that Caravaggio   layered color by applying first under painting  areas, solid under color, and then he follows   those layers by using glazes a very transparent or  thin veil of color that will saturate the color. so   I want to share with you guys this demonstration  so let's just go ahead and take a look at that. One of the most important colors used for glazing  was madder Lake. This is madder lake right here.   It was prepared on a porphyry slab. This color  is popular with a lot of Renaissance artists. It   has this beautiful scarlet color, and usually was  prepared with a heat-bodied oil an oil that would   give it richness and give it transparency.   This is a typical way of preparing this color. The   color was usually mauled on a stone slab to make  it fully disperse into the medium. Caravaggio in   this painting also uses Lapis Lazuli. the Lapis  Lazuli that I'm using here is from Afghanistan.   It's a color that was very popular with a lot of  the most successful artists from the Renaissance.   By the 19th century the color was replaced by its  synthetic version, but here I'm mixing the Lapis   Lazuli directly on the palette. This color cannot  be mauled on the stone because it will deteriorate   the particle size, and it will result in a duller  color, so artists in a lot of treatises mention the   preparation of this color directly on the palette  by mixing it with a heat-bodied walnut oil or   washed bleached walnut oil. These colors are  very transparent in comparison as you can see here,   a very close-up image of Caravaggio's painting. You  can see the glazes and even the particle size. You   see there how Caravaggio over the white highlight  applies a very thin translucent glaze of Lapis   Lazuli. This is a very beautiful technique. He would  have applied first, a bottom layer and then on the   top very top layers he's applying a pure glaze of  Lapis Lazuli. You can see how the colors slightly   granular. It just not very finely ground pigment. It's  because it will lose its color intensity. This is   common of a lot of artists' techniques from this  time. Most of the artists from this era would have   learned a sequence of layering techniques such as  the use of Vermilion and red lake or madder lake   or cochineal lake. These are all pigments that were  transparent in nature and a lot of artists in the   first bottom layers would paint very solid colors  using perhaps an earth color or Vermilion and   built up the first initial layers by just starting  with the solid opaque under painting or under   color and these colors would just be layered and  allowed to dry and then in the top layers these   colors were usually applied semi-transparently  and in the very very last layers the artist would   be working with the straightforward glaze which  is just a very thin veil of color. This is a very   important concept in classical painting. Today  we use opaque colors that are manufactured   and a lot of artists are very interested in  covering the ground or covering the painting   but during this time artists were using these  layering techniques to endow the painting with   a lot of depth and a lot of richness. In the  case of Caravaggio for the buildup of these   grapes. On the top layers, the artists will use full modeling meaning that he will apply perhaps   a glaze and this glaze is usually worked into.  There are various methods to glaze. One of them is   to apply a very translucent color to deepen a  color, such as in this demonstration of Vermeer's   "The Girl With a Pearl Earring". The blue turban is  Lapis Lazuli layered over, indeed a first layer of   Lapis lazuli and Lead white. This top-layer results  in just one single layer or perhaps two layers of   Lapis Lazuli unmixed with white, but in  some other techniques such as the painting by   Caravaggio. The painting  is layered. The glaze is worked into because the   artist is trying to achieve a translucency and  a transparency. He will use other colors such as   Vermilion, yellow ocher, Lapis Lazuli, and Red Lake  to get the full range of saturation. The full   range of value to these grapes, and this results  in a very beautiful technique. When glazing   you don't have to necessarily just apply a  very thin transparent color, layer of color   that is untouched you could actually work into  the wet glaze, so you could work wet into wet   into a glaze or you could just simply apply a  translucent or transparent layer right over the   dried layer to saturate the color. These are  various techniques that you could use and the Old   Masters used these various techniques to enrich  their paintings to create some of these   beautiful and very complex effects. This is  a demonstration from my last course dedicated to   Caravaggio's early painting techniques. By the time  that Caravaggio becomes a mature painter he's   abandoning some of these techniques, and he starts  to work on some very dark rounds and the glazing   is sort of replaced by scumbling, opaque scumbling.  These are all issues and terminologies that   I use and that I teach in my live online  courses. By the way if you're interested   in checking out my online live courses in the  link below, in the description below you could   find links that will give you more information  about my live online courses. I also have some   Udemy courses available if you're interested  in checking out some of these demonstrations   and some of these courses that I have published.  If you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe   to my channel to receive future notifications  for my live presentations. Thank you for watching.

Channel: Luis Borrero, Visual Artist

Views: 22,080

Keywords: glazing, vermeer technique, oil painting, glazing secrets of the old masters, glazing techniques, Caravaggio technique, how to glaze with paints, oil painting techniques, oil painting tutoria, oil painting basics, old masters, classical art, painting techniques, oil painting techniques of the masters, oil painting techniques on canvas, secrets of the old masters, painting secrets, what is glazing in oil painting, how did the old masters glazed, how the old masters painted

Id: cKRIu1G5lAc

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023