Botticelli's Technique - Egg Tempera

Hi, my name is Antonis and I'm the painter of this video. Today I want to share with you my process of painting this amazing portrait by Sandro Botticelli, the portrait of a young man, and I want to share with you step by step how I painted it. I have a previous video on painting the Venus by Botticelli, the famous Venus by Botticelli, and I painted that video almost a year ago and I decided to complete these studies on Botticelli by painting this beautiful portrait. As you see, I've already started by having transferred my drawing from the paper onto my board and now I'm doing this underpainting. Botticelli painted this portrait using tempera. He didn't, according to the sources, he didn't paint it with any oil, so it was a perfect example to to use tempera in order to paint a renaissance portrait. So if you are interested in this technique, keep watching with me this video and I'll try to be as extensive in my explanations as possible. I hope you are well, healthy, I hope you are having a great creative period in your life and that I do hope that we will get over this hard period in history as easy as possible. So anyway, here, as you see, after having transferred my my drawing on my board, I'm doing this underpainting. Now, this board, I've prepared it with a rabbit skin glue gesso and there is another video where I show you how I prepare my boards. This board actually is one of those boards that I prepared on that video and it just holds excellently the egg tempera on it. So here you see me doing this underpainting with just using egg tempera solution and a little bit of black. I'm treating this as if it was a watercolor painting. I will gradually go darker and this underpainting helps me understand better the portrait, read better this portrait, understand what the shapes of light on the face are, where are the shadows, where are the transitions between light and shadow and in general it's a warming up, it warms me up and for the later painting on. It's not a waste of time even though you'll see that most of this will be covered under a vertacio, a proplasmos for those of you who are familiar with iconography. All this will be covered but still something will be visible from underneath the vertacio, something from this first black and white painting and it's not a waste of time because as I said it keeps me, it warms me up and prepares me for the later on painting. I try to be yes my my brushstrokes here are very coarse, very abrupt let's say but I still try to to be as thorough as possible in terms of searching these shapes and understanding the the tones of each area. Now I'm painting this background here it's something very plain, a very plain blue color and now you'll see me painting these clothes. I'm applying vertacio that I believe it's suitable, it's a dark purple color that will cover the whole area and on that purple area I will paint the shadows first, the shadows of the the clothes. I'm painting these shadows and at the same time I'm blending them with the vertacio with brushstrokes that seem appropriate to the style of Botticelli and after I've done these shadows on the clothes now I will proceed with painting the light, painting the first lights on these clothes. I've noticed that Botticelli uses a brushstroke that is not completely smooth, this is characteristic of painting with tempera of course and his lines are very beautiful, very delicate and fine and I want to keep this character on this study as well. So I'll do this first coat of light on the clothes and I will try to to keep this brushstroke evident a little bit, of course I'll do some blending later on with a more fine brushstroke, I think that's the way Botticelli must have painted these amazing clothes as well. So first I do my vertacio, then I'll do the shadows and then I will proceed with the light. This is the process and of course Botticelli was an artist of early renaissance and much of his artwork is based on his teachers who were painters very familiar to the Byzantine style and they evolved, all this is an evolution of the Byzantine style, the Greek style in many ways where the typical way of painting was just like that, painting a vertacio then a proplosmos as we call it, then we paint the darker areas and then the lighter. Later on this with the discovery let's say of oil, the material of oil, the medium of oil this technique changed and was altered, we have the grisaille, we have some other various techniques to paint. But Botticelli pretty sure followed this this Greek almost technique, Byzantine technique and of course he used tempera for this. Now I'm doing, I'm proceeding with painting the face and the hair of this young man and of course I will start again with covering my underpainting with vertacio, a different vertacio for the face and different for the hair. I try to imagine how the painting that I'm copying, that I'm studying, how it would be without the lights, the shadows and all this and try to understand, to guess what the color of these vertacios would be. So I decided to make a vertacio here that wouldn't be as dark as a vertacio of a Byzantine icon let's say, but more light and more vivid. For this I've added a little bit of yellow ochre, some cadmium yellow, some titanium white and a little bit of red. The cadmium yellow gives in any color that we add yellow, it makes it more alive, more vivid and I was pretty sure that Botticelli, according of course to my reproduction that I'm observing, that he's used some yellow on his paintings and for the vertacio of the hair I've used of course something darker like some red, iron oxide red, some black and maybe some ochre and again a little bit of cadmium yellow. I'm not really into using exactly the same colors that these artists used, I'm using colors that didn't exist in their time. For me this is not very important and it's not part of my interest to make a copy of these paintings even to the level of their materials. I'm not really interested in that, I'm interested in painting, in studying their paintings and trying to paint to learn something out of their paintings and to learn the way they build the volume and they paint their faces. For these grapsimata, let's say, I'm painting now on the vertacio the the darker facial characteristics, the areas that I see that need to be a little bit darker than the vertacio. I will spend some time here because this is a very very important phase on the painting, it's an important part of painting these darker facial characteristics correctly. I will try to to observe my reference and isolate in my imagination, in my mind the lights, remove the lights, anything that might be lighter than the vertacio, to remove it in my mind and try to think how the painting of Botticelli might look without the lights and also try to paint the same thing on my painting. The process when we paint like this, when we do studies, we really have to to use our imagination and somehow try to understand what the painting we study looks in various, would look in various stages of the painting process. So here I will spend some time on this here, try to to paint these grapsimata, these darker elements, trying to to blend these as much as possible and according to my reference to blend these as I see fit and then I will proceed when I'm done and feel I'm okay with this step, I will proceed to adding the lights on the face but I will first make sure that this is the best I could do, that this seems ready for the next step. For this I will paint as much as it takes. Here of course you see this video in a sped up process, I wanted to keep this video under an hour in length. You can find in Patreon the full version of this video, I will upload a slow version where I paint more slowly and you will be able to also understand better the brushstrokes of mine, but it would be impossible here to to keep the right the live speed in this video, it would take more than five hours. So you get the idea though, I don't think that this speed doesn't allow you to understand what I'm doing and what's going on. I'm doing, you know, darkening and blending, darkening and blending, until this point where I feel comfortable to to proceed now with painting the lights. Now for this I've used a color where I mixed the titanium white, some yellow ochre and some cadmium red. I want a color that will be much rosier than the proplasmo and of course much lighter in value. So here I'm just following the instructions of Botticelli, my teacher here, and I will place these shapes of light on the face. My facial characteristics, the darker facial characteristics really do help a lot, but I also try to to be alert, let's say, and try to transfer these shapes of light on my portrait. This process is, I would say, very satisfying, it's very nice to paint with tempera, it dries instantly, it's very hot here and the color dries almost immediately on the surface of the board and it really is very very satisfying to do it for me. Try to understand where these shapes need to be to be blended with the verdaccio and on these areas try to to use your brush in a linear very fine way. This is how Botticelli painted this portrait. Don't worry about the likeness, if it looks like the painting right now, don't worry if the portrait looks horrible. Little by little you will build the face there and it will look great. This, of course, you see me painting here and I have an experience on painting with tempera more than, I don't know, 30 years. I've started painting with egg tempera in 1992 when I was 14 years old and, as you understand, I'm very comfortable with using this medium and it's something that feels very natural to me. I understand how the medium behaves and you see a result here that was brewed, let's say, that was prepared many many years now. I say this because maybe for some of you this seems disheartening. If you try to to paint the same portrait maybe you will be disappointed or understand how hard it is. I want to tell you that if I show you my paintings when I first started, they are just horrible. They were not promising, they were not looking good and as I see them now, I say to myself that if I have a student who painted this horribly, I could probably discourage him or her to proceed with studying painting. They looked very bad, my first paintings with tempera, so I want to tell you to just keep practicing. If you enjoy it, keep practicing and you will be fine. I remember that once a teacher of mine, he really was very hard with me, he really he made a very harsh critique, he said that the eyes of the... I painted the Christ and he said that the eyes looked like the eyes of an owl, he said that the cheeks of Christ looked like the plates of the Ten Commandments. He was very harsh but I remember that that critique, that very harsh critique did not really affect me. Even then, as you know, a teenager, I was a teenager but it did not really affect me. I would say if now somebody would tell me this, I would be more vulnerable but then somehow it just passed from one year to the other year and disappeared, that critique. Why? Because I was so determined that this is something that I wanted to do in my life, that I was sure that he was wrong, I was sure that his critique was wrong and I didn't let it affect me. Thank God, thank God, I'm glad that I didn't let a critique from a teacher back then change my my love of painting. So anyway, here, back to this study, here you see me blending this first light, I've created an in-between tone and I did the first blending and an in-between tone is a color that is in between the proplasmo, the verdacio and the first light. So I'll take some of these both colors and I will mix them. I will add a little bit of cadmium yellow just to liven this color up a little bit and I will do this first blending. Now I'm doing a second layer of blending with a color that is closer to the first light. So what I'm doing here in general is blending the first layer of light that I painted with my underneath green brownish verdacio. This is a process that has its technique. I mean, I use the tip of my brush in a very linear way. First I'm doing an in-between tone to do a very basic blending. Then I will do in-between tones, more in-between tones that are either darker or lighter in order to achieve a very fine, very nice blending. So just make sure that you use a very nice kolinsky brush, a very fine brush that does behave the way we want it to and also something very important and excuse me, use this brush as delicately as you can. Use these fine lines. The lines will be visible. This is something that we desire. We don't want the lines to be invisible or as smooth as if you painted with oil. No, the lines should be visible but try to make these lines as thin, as fine as possible. This will create a magnificent grid of tones on your portrait and it will really make it very very charming for the viewer to see. So keep in mind to use this brush very finely, very delicately. And the other thing that's very important here is that you have to to always understand what tone you are using, what's on your palette and where you are on your palette. Don't just use randomly colors from your palette. Know that now I'm doing a first in-between color to blend the verdaccio and my first light. Now I will do a second in-between color that I will blend, that will help me blend the first in-between color and the proplasmos to further blend the first in-between color and my verdaccio. Now I'm doing a second in-between color that will help me blend my first in-between color and my first light. I know this is confusing maybe but if you clear this process in your mind then it will be so much easier for you to to accomplish this portrait. Try to understand what's first, what's second, what are these in-between blending colors and you will do fantastically. It's not that hard it's very simple and another thing I want to mention here is that in this channel I've given you a couple of videos on how to to draw using you know a printed copy of your reference. You print a copy and then using the grid method or a method with some axis, a compass and some lines you can draw a very accurate, very very accurate actually, drawing of your reference. But I want to say that for for many of you this is very hard, very difficult and it just kills the the pleasure of playing with colors of moving on with the colors. So I would say just print the the portrait or the the painting you want to study just print it out and transfer your drawing from that print. It's not it's not that bad we don't all need to be so deeply in painting. Some people just want to have a lighter approach so don't let this confusing for many people process of drawing discourage you and let you not play with colors. It's okay. Print your study and proceed with painting. Now let me just explain a little bit what I'm doing here. Now I'm doing the same thing but with a second light. So I've added a second layer of light on the first. That means that I've added some titanium white on my first light pigment mixture. I've created a color that is closer to white. Titanium white, cadmium red and a little bit of ochre, yellow ochre and I've proceeded with lightening up a little bit this phase and again with in between tones I will do the blending. After I've to blend this I want to blend this second light to the first. Now I want you to understand I will give you also here another tip. A very very important part of this painting process is the transparent colors that I use. On my palette of course as you see here this color is a very dense color but then when I'm about to blend it I will add a little bit of tempera solution on it. I will make things more clear, more transparent on more palette. This is the the power of egg tempera. You can thin out the solution very very much and it will still keep its adhesive qualities, the egg yolk qualities on it in a way that allows you to create these very fine, very beautiful transparencies. These transparencies will help you blend better, make more interesting blendings and of course it will achieve a result that is very very different to that of oil painting and very very very charming and beautiful. I do hope that you understand what I'm talking about, that this is understandable to you and it would be great for me if you took some inspiration out of this video and painted something nice or if you learned really something out of these videos. A friend of mine was complaining about how hard it is to find a great teacher to study all these techniques of the past, how teachers withheld this information and even if a student pays them they still withhold this information and it's just sad to not being able to to share this information with students. It's really sad. I try to to be very thorough on these videos and try to really share with you what I'm doing. Of course you have to understand that even if you have the best teacher in the world and you don't practice on your easel, you don't stay in your studio, then your progress will not be as great. We are lucky to have so much information these days but at the same time I find that it's harder for me to be in the studio and practice more and more. So let me just tell you that now I'm doing a third layer of light as you saw and if you didn't check go some a minute or two earlier and just check how I blended that third light to the second light. I used very very liquid very very thin colors and this created a beautiful beautiful effect. So what I'm doing here is just going back and forth trying to create a blending result that is very similar to that of Botticelli and at the same time try to keep things very interesting, lively, chromatically to be alive. Maybe it doesn't seem here but this portrait has some life to it and try to do the comparisons and make sure that things are as light as you see them on your reference and as dark as you see them on your reference. Try to keep the shapes correctly and go a little bit you can feel free to go back and forth like here you see I'm adding a little bit of rosy cheeks on on this portrait. This will add to the liveness of this portrait. Go back and forth just make sure you handle your material delicately, make sure that the layers underneath are dried before you proceed with the next layer. A tempera can take can accept many layers but you have to make sure that each layer is appropriately dry before painting the next layer. This is very very important and of course yes a tempera can accept many layers but I would say okay keep in mind that it cannot accept really really too many. After a point even if you apply these layers on a dry layer before, after a point I guess the tempera will start cracking. So yes as you see it really takes a lot of time to to do this blending, very fine blending. It does take me a lot of time and here the video is completely sped up you at this point you can't really understand what I'm doing. It's just that I go back and forth trying to light things up and blend them, adding lights and blending them. Then I can add some very at this point add some very thin glazings and blend them. It's a process that only experience will tell you how to do it. I don't think that I can actually explain at this point of the portrait what I'm doing. It's just painting with my intuition just painting without any any step any process in my mind and I'm just following my inner teacher let's say who says me do this or do that add this and add that in order in order to make this portrait more like Botticelli's. After I'm done with this of course everything I told you before about the process is valid. I follow a process. At the end though of and when I'm almost done with adding these lights on the face I will do a general checkup. I will go back and forth and I will try to correct some things or add some colors according to my intuition. I will always though make sure that I will handle the brush very nicely very delicately. Here I'm painting this the mouth of this young man and again I try to imagine how Botticelli must have painted this beautiful mouth what colors might have used. I understand that is a more rosy mouth. For me it's not very important the exact color of the mouth but more the shapes to keep the lines the line for example that is in the middle of the mouth to keep that and its character the same to keep to understand where there is a shadow in the mouth and where is the light and trying to to transfer this on my mouth and after I'm done let's say with this with the mouth I will proceed with of course painting the eyes. The first thing is to just observe the eyes and see how light the the white part of the eyes is where is the shadow in that area is there any light in the iris or how strong that light is are there any reflections things like that. I'll try to do some observations first in intellectual observations and I will also try to see if the iris how abrupt is the transition between the iris and the white part of the eyes normally there is a it's not a very abrupt transition there is some blending in between so I'll try to observe to do these observations and then I'll start painting with the eyes of course the eyes are extremely important and we have to pay much attention. Here I see that Botticelli painted these amazing irises in this young man's portrait and I do want to keep this portrait as close as his so I paint the white part I see that there is an even transition between the white part and the lower let's say lid of the eye there's try to really really try to observe eyes when you paint them try to see are there any dark lines in between the lower white part and the skin or there is a there is just a color difference are there any contours what's going on how dark the iris is all these observations that I said before. Here I also see that the portrait of Botticelli has a very slight let's say blue greenish reflection on the eyes it's a little bit bluish and but very very discreet and that's very charming on this portrait and I want to to really try and copy this usually since the eyeballs are spherical one part of the white part of these eyeballs is in shadow don't forget that very very discreet and beautiful as you see directly the face becomes alive it's something magic something to me amazing just with a few brush strokes we can give so much life to to a portrait really beautiful again you can always feel free to go back some steps make some corrections that really looks nice in my opinion and I'm always amazed about these old masters who who were just you know masters magic yeah I think this looks nice in general try try to be you know discreet try to add colors for example if you want to make the cheeks rosier yes do them but really do not overdo it it's better if if we are as I say more discreet and more you know subtle with painting than more let's say garish and too much try to be more discreet and you will see how everything will look great and now I will add a little bit of some details like these hairy like brushstrokes for the eyebrows and maybe some shadowing also at the same time shadows I have to say that are very very important in painting we tend to believe that the more lights we use the better it is but in order in order for a light to be seen and to be revealed we need to have the shadows that's something very very important that you have to understand the darker areas we have and the darker elements we have the better contrast that we will achieve and it will be overall better so do not cover everything with light don't push extend your light areas everywhere try to observe where the shadows are on your study and keep them or even you know some some of us try to eliminate these shadows I think it's great to understand the shadow areas and the dark areas and to to keep them intact try to always ask yourselves where is my what is my darkest element and how dark that element is usually in portraits we have the the pupils being very dark and of course many many shadows we have to to find these dark areas and to keep them dark so now this is the the finished portrait before painting the hair now I will start painting the hair and I will follow the I will follow broadly the technique of Byzantine icon so on this first verdaccio that we have on the hair the first base color that I used for the hair I've added a little bit of shadows if you notice on the beginning while I was painting the the base color I at the same time added some discrete shadows I would say and now I create a color that is the first light on the hair it's a color that consists from yellow ochre a little bit of black maybe some iron oxide red it's a warm ochre like color and now I will use this to to light up the the head of this young man of course I'm observing my reference I see where Botticelli handles this first light in a linear way just give the the illusion of hairs and feel free to do some corrections and then I will proceed with a second layer of light on this face I want to thank you so much for being here I do hope that this video taught you something thank you again so much again you can find on my page on patreon I will have I will have a list a link below you can find a more slow version of this portrait and you can observe the way I handle the brush more slowly thank you again so much as I said it's really nice your presence in this channel is really amazing if you are interested in my iconography online course check the link below and please do send me your artwork on my email account it's really nice to to see what what you paint it's really really nice as you see with adding the hair the lights of the hair in this portrait it becomes even more beautiful even more Botticelli like and I do hope you agree with me that this is a beautiful portrait that Botticelli painted and I studied here so thank you again so much be stay creative stay healthy and I will see you on my next video tutorial bye