Painting on raw or dry plaster as a revival of ancient art

Painting on plaster - the secrets of

mastery. Many people will shrug their shoulders in bewilderment: "Why should I know some secrets of painting on plaster if there are professional artists for this?"So it is so, but imagine that the master covered your walls with magnificent patterns and drawings, received a payment for work and bowed out, and you were left to admire the result of his work. But a year passes, and all the fresco in your house is cracked, and sometimes crumbles, and the master assures that this kind of decoration of the walls is short-lived. And only then you will learn that the walls should have been prepared in a special way even before the plastering. It would be insulting, is not it?

That's why you should know that if you intend to decorate your house with frescoes, before applying plaster, the surface of the walls should be as much as possible distorted by all kinds of potholes and rather deep grooves. But this is only the beginning of preparation for painting on decorative plaster. Further,

after preliminary moistening of , plaster is applied, which is a rough lime mortar, one of the components of which must be large sand or shredded crumbs. Also in the mixture is put a broken into a small crumb brick and very finely chopped straw. All this is laid on the wall with a layer of 2 centimeters or more( the maximum permissible thickness of the layer for equalizing the curvature of the walls is 5 centimeters) without grouting so that the surface remains coarse and uneven. The maximum, which is acceptable, is to roll on the plaster layer with a bottle or beat it with a wooden bar for some compaction and better coupling with the wall, and then apply diametrical scratches for better grinding of the next layer( the wall should turn out "into a slanting box").

So, the first layer of plaster is applied."How, only the first, is not too much plaster?" - someone will ask. Even a little, since there can be as many as seven layers of plaster, each of the following is applied not earlier than the previous one will dry completely. New layers are becoming thinner, and the granularity of the components, respectively, decreases. The last layer, with a thickness of only 3 millimeters, contains the smallest quartz sand, and certainly there are no fragments of brick and straw in it. And the last layer is applied in small sections, exactly what area the master can cover during the painting on the raw plaster before it dries completely, that is, maximum for 5, and ideally for 3 hours .After this time, the surface of the plaster will grasp the crystalline calcium crust and the paint will cease not to be absorbed, but also to be applied.

Painting on plaster as it is

If before the artists acted in a hurry, due to extremely fast drying of the plaster( on average the painter had 10 minutes to cover the plot with the prepared plot), today in painting on the raw plaster slow and thoughtfulness is permissible. In particular, now there is no need to cover the wall with a pattern "by eye", because you can safely prepare the drawing on paper and transfer it to the wall surface. How? Just cutting the picture into separate fragments, equal in size to the prepared sections for a single painting session, and transferring the contours of the image to fresh plaster using a needle or sharp pencil by extrusion. Sometimes a method of transferring a picture to a wall using the technique of striking is used( by piercing the holes in the drawing with a needle and thus leaving traces on the plaster).To ensure that the substrate for the pattern is perfectly white, you can apply a diluted lime solution to the finishing primer for painting on the plaster.

When the outline of the picture is applied to the finishing area, the artist starts to work with soft brushes, easily pressing on the pile, so as not to smear a layer of plaster a couple of millimeters thick. If the smears are applied through the sleeves, it is likely that part of the lime will be lifted from the final layer and mixed with the paint, which after drying will turn out to be whitish. It is inadmissible and a thick layer of paint, as it will not be absorbed into the plaster and subsequently, after drying, it will crack and fall off. Therefore, remember all the nuances and carefully monitor the work of the artist, standing next to a very thoughtful kind - let him not relax.

Painting on raw plaster and its alternative

The painting technique for raw plaster is very distinctive. Initially, only light colors are applied, where they are provided by the pattern, then the middle tones, and at the end dark colors. Then the master starts to work in the reverse order, staining first the dark tones, then the middle ones and at the end are light ones. Why is everything so complicated? Just as you move from light to dark, the artist gives time to light colors to soak into the plaster, and then, when you move back from the dark to the light, looks where the light tones have turned out to be too faded and tints the desired areas. In addition, the second stage of the work allows you to impose on the dried up areas, where necessary, darker tones. There is information that once the artists involved in painting the walls, to increase the clarity of colors under the blue paint imposed on the ground gray ocher( ref), and under the rest - yellow. Sometimes, when you need some areas to perform more pale colors, for example, to transfer the perspective in the picture or for the image of fog, the limescale is added to the paint. However, in small quantities, lime in paints for painting walls is always contained in order to be well fixed.

When the master finishes painting on decorative plaster, already fairly dried, unfilled areas of the finishing ground are neatly cut from the previous layer obliquely outward. At the next stage of painting, a new section of the finishing layer is applied so closely that the seams are not visible. Painting on plaster requires attentiveness, since it is impossible to remodel a plot of a fresco, you can either make small corrections, or start all over again.

A completely different technology - painting on dry plaster, it is a fairly rare technique used by old masters "a secco", which, in fact, means "dry".Quite a good alternative, because the finishing layer can be applied immediately to the whole wall and only to moisten it on those areas where the painting is to be done. Only here the solution should be special - lime paste with a 10% aqueous solution of casein glue. Liquid composition, similar to milk( it is not recommended to drink) is applied three times to the plaster, the next layer being applied no earlier than the previous one does not dry. Paints for painting on dry plaster can be used any - oil, glue, but it is best to apply tempera.

Great masters of the past used the tempera of their own cooking, and many secrets are lost today. Yes, and whether you need them - because there are already so many options for painting on plaster. Choose any, and let your house become a genuine work of art.