A workshop by Sergei Chudanov   / chudanovsergei  

DETAILED STEP-BY-STEP DESCRIPTION:
This is a private workshop I took at Glazunov Art Academy in April 2019. Sergei and I were painting simultaneously two master copies of Pope Clement X by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, circa 1670-1671. I was shooting Sergei's master copy on days 1, 2 and 3, but on the day 3 he did not have time to finish his layer, so on the 4th day I am shooting him painting on my master copy instead, you can notice the difference.

Normally, it takes a week for the layer of oil glazes to dry, but Sergei and I were mixing some cobalt dryer into the paint, and our layers were dry in 2-3 days.

DAY 1. On the first day we were painting on a canvas previously primed by several layers of gesso, sanded, and painted with raw umber on top. We transferred the drawing using regular charcoal, sprayed fixative over it. Afterwards we lightly painted the shadows with a mix of black and ocher. The most interesting part was lights and highlights. Sergey mixed the titanium white and ocher, put thick brushstrokes on the most highlighted parts of the face, and started spreading it onto less highlighted areas, rubbing it into the canvas, using a pretty dry brush with a little bit of oil and turpentine (very, very little!). This color looked warm when applied in a thick layer, but being rubbed into the dark primed canvas with little to no thinner it the color turned cool!

My painting from Day 1:   / bwacw5khq-t  

Day 2. Next session Sergei and I have started by taking excessive white paint off using a regular razor blade, and getting rid of the brushstroke texture. (You have to keep your painting surface smooth at all times, overwise the glazes will not spread evenly). Then he made the following mixtures for the skin tones:
1) Highlights: white + cadmium yellow + cadmium orange
2) Lights: white + cadmium red + lemon yellow
3) Halftones: emerald green + ocher + black
4) Shadows: earthy colors (ochers and siennas)

(since I was mostly interested in the way old masters painted human skin, we did not talk much about other textures. But, basically, it's always a warm highlight, slightly cooler light, cool halftone and warm shadow.)

It is important to use a new brush (or a well-cleaned brush) for each mixture, and blend highlights only with lights, lights - only with highlights and halftones, halftones - only with lights and shadows, shadows - only with halftones. This will keep your color temperature solid.

It felt weird applying colors that were so different from the colors on the original painting, but they were changing on the go. Transparent layers of pretty intense colors were dimming in minutes, being optically mixed with the previous monochromatic layer!

My painting:   / bwac3hqh-tk  

DAY 3:
Sergey prepared the same mixtures, except for the emerald halftone, and told me to enter the halftone from both sides: with pink color from the lights and with earthy colors from the shadows. I was basically painting repeating the first layer with more details. At the end, it looked ready, but cooler and brighter, than the original.

My painting:   / bwklc9tbumd  

DAY 4.

Final glaze! Sergei has covered the whole canvas with a very thin layer of black (wiped exessive color off), so it worked like a darening Instagram filter. He used a mixture of oi and dammar varnish this time, and a bit of turpentine, since the cobalt dryer was thickening the paint significantly.( If you paint with normal drying speed, you probably won't need turpentine at all).

Afterwards, he entered this layer with highlights. Now THAT'S WHY all old master's paintings are so well blended with the backgrounds! All because of this final overall glaze.

At this stage, you can fix anything you want to fix, unless the previous layers is too different. I moved one eyelid slightly higher, worked fine. Also tried to move a fold, and that did not work: in a few days the old one started showing through, and now I have two similar folds instead of one :)
  / bw0xfj2h8bc  

Overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I have taught many people this method since then.
We even painted a live model in a Renaissance dress:   / bzmlurgb5fb  

Huge thanks to Pelageya Infante for video editing. She has removed my voice since it did not record well, and replaced it with nice music.

And, of course, I am very grateful to Sergei Chudanov, a teacher at Glazunov Art Academy in Moscow, Russia.

Thank you for watching this and reading this to the end. I did not expect this video to become this popular:)