Painting with Egg Tempera - Fra Angelico Technique

Hi, my name is Antonis and I am the iconographer of this video. Thank you all so much for being here, subscribing to this channel and supporting it with your comments, your questions and your presence in general. It's really nice that you share your progress and that you become better and better artists and iconographers just by watching these videos. Again, thank you all so much. For today's video I decided to experiment a little bit with Italian art and especially with one of the famous artworks from a painter of the early Renaissance, Fra Angelico. Fra Angelico was born in Italy, of course, in the late 14th century, 1395, and he lived as a monk all his life. In fact, Fra Angelico is beatified from the Catholic Church and he is an amazing painter and I decided that I have many things to learn just by copying some of his work. This is the head of an angel painted by him as a part of a big icon of the Annunciation. Of course, I am not copying any of his gold artwork, the angel I am painting has no gold leaves, it's just the painting part, the head, that I am interested in copying. The work of the early Renaissance is similar enough to the Byzantine artwork. It is the continuation of the medieval painting in Europe and medieval painting is very close and very relative to the work of the Byzantines. We have many Italian painters, contemporaries and a generation or two before Fra Angelico that their work resembles the Byzantine painting. Fra Angelico looks a little bit more to the nature and he tries to make his figures more sweet and more soft than the medieval paintings. But still he keeps the process very similar. He applies proplasmy and then he paints with his grapsimata that are much softer of course. The proplasmy that he uses are much lighter in tone than the Byzantine proplasmy. As you see me here painting the grapsimata, Fra Angelico paints with a much more soft and thin brushstroke. It really does echo some of the icons from Crete with their amazing detailed brushstroke. The only difference is that Fra Angelico here wants to be more naturalistic and more close to reality. Of course there is a long way before the high ransoms but his works and his murals are truly wonderful. And of course Fra Angelico is the artistic grandfather of Michelangelo. Here I am painting the grapsimata. I try to observe which are these dark areas on the face of the painting of Fra Angelico. By the way on the lower right part of the screen you see my painting finished. You can find online the angel of Fra Angelico. I try to make these grapsimata as close as I can to the grapsimata of the painting of Fra Angelico. I try to observe where these darker areas are softer and where they are painted in a more abrupt way. And of course I take into consideration that the lights will come and will be painted on top of the proplasmos. I try to imagine how the head will look after the photismatar painting. After I have painted my grapsimata and I am sure that there is nothing else that I could have painted in a darker tone, I will apply my first light the same way that I would apply it if I was painting a Byzantine angel. And I will apply it the same way with tiny thin lines, exactly as if I had to paint a Cretan Virgin Mary. For the color of the proplasmos of this angel I have used again ochre, a little black, a little white and some yellow. It's definitely lighter than the proplasmi I use for Byzantine faces. A little bit more white and maybe some yellow. And the color of the first light is exactly the same, like ochre, white and some red. Of course the shapes are completely different here. And for this I try to observe my icon and see what are the shapes that Fra Angelico in this case has used in order to describe the lights on the head of this angel. I want to copy not just the final image, I want to copy also the process of Fra Angelico. That's why I observe as much as I can the way he has painted the light on this head. And I see that he uses many tiny thin lines to blend this first photosma with the proplasmos. I do not smear the pigment, my material. I try to blend, if I have to blend, with tiny thin lines that describe and give the illusion of the volume. And here, as you see, after the first photosma is done, I make a mid-tone, a color that is a mixture of first photosma and proplasmo. And with this color I try to blend the first photosma with the proplasmos. Here, of course, is a totally different idea behind the light of the head. It's much softer and much less stylized than in the Byzantine tradition. So I try to observe more, because I'm not accustomed in painting in this Western tradition. Some people say to me that an iconographer, a Byzantine iconographer, should not paint in a more Western style or in a Renaissance style. I think that painting is painting and we should always explore any tradition that would help us improve as iconographers and as artists. And we should always paint anything that gives us pleasure and satisfaction to paint. I wouldn't give this icon into an Orthodox church for people to pray on, but I have to say that it was very rewarding and satisfying to paint in this more naturalistic tradition for once. And I believe that I have learned a lot from Angeliko as my teacher here. Again, I think that painting the hrapsimata and then blending the first light to the proplasmos is 75% of the work. When you blend the first photosma to the proplasmos in a satisfactory way, then most of your job is done. I really like the transparency that this first photosma has and permits the underdrawing to be evident. Here you still see me painting with the first photosma. I haven't seen this annunciation from up close. I just paint from a reproduction that I found online and I suspect that my study here just reflects a part of that glorious painting. But I'll try to do my best to be as faithful to the reproduction as I can. Although I really believe that Angeliko's piece must be amazing from up close. I added some transparent red on the cheeks with very tiny, thin and transparent lines. These old masters, I don't know how they were so amazing. Maybe they didn't have all the distractions we have today, like we paint and our cellphones ring the whole time. We paint and our mind is on money, on issues of the day. And maybe this reflects and has an impact on our artwork. It's really unbelievable how these old masters' work is to perfection. Anyway, I will try my best and of course it's not only their technique and their perfection in the way they paint. It's also the fact that they were very creative in terms of subject matter or the way they compose their subject matter. Of course it was a different era, a different period in the history of art. So here you see me now painting the second light on the head of Archangel Gabriel. For this second light I've added some titanium white to my first light. Very simple, I try to keep it transparent enough and painting it on the areas that my reference painting tells me. I always paint with these tiny thin lines that both the Byzantine tradition and the Italian early Renaissance tradition use. And when I'm painting this second light I keep in mind that I'm gonna blend this second light to the first light with a mid-tone and a liquid mid-tone that you see me now painting with. And I'm gonna blend this second light to the first light with a mid-tone and a liquid mid-tone that you see me now painting with. From this point on I think it's more... I think the angel, the face of the angel is mostly done, it's mostly painted. I just try to make it as smooth as I see it at the painting of Fra Angelico. I like how transparent this head looks at some areas, like in the lower jaw area, it's really nice and I wouldn't like to paint and lose that transparency. And this is the second light that you see me painting with. And now I will light a little bit the eye with a color that is slightly more cold, like it has a little bit of blue inside, just a tiny little bit. The idea is the same, it's just the forms that are very different to the Byzantine tradition. Now I will highlight some areas of the face, of course we don't have smitherees in the strict way, the way we have them in the Byzantine tradition, but I will use a third light, a tone that is stronger and brighter than the previous one, but not extremely different. And with this tone I will light just a little bit some areas that need this light. Again, at this point I'm going back and forth, adding some half-transparent layers, just to make it look closer to the original painting of Angelika. I'm sure that if I did this study in the museum where this painting is, or the chapel that this painting originally is, if I did this study right next to the original painting, I might have a different approach and the result might be different, but of course we paint with the means that we have, and hopefully this is as close to the original as it could be. At some point I decided that it's time to stop, and we as painters we should know where to stop, and declare it finished, so I decided to move on to painting the hair of Archangel Gabriel. The hair painted by Fra Angelico were a very complex cluster of forms, and I didn't know how to approach this hair and how to paint them. I followed my instinct, so firstly I painted with a tone of let's say grapsimo the forms, I tried to see where every form will be painted, and this is what you see me now doing. So first on the proplasmos, that is a light brown-greenish blonde color, I paint with a light brown color the shapes of these forms, that the locks of the angel have. It's a very complicated cluster of forms, as I said, so take your time and try to be accurate, because if you make a mistake, say on the one side of the head, until you reach to the other side of the head, your drawing will be completely off. So try to constantly correct yourself when you paint complex forms, as much as you can, of course we are not robots, and everything will be fine. So after painting this grapsimo, I here soften it with some transparent proplasmos color. Again, I don't think that this really was the process of Fra Angelico, but I try to follow my instinct and paint it as the best way I can. And next I'm painting my first light of the hair. Fra Angelico has painted the hair with these beautiful, amazing thin lines. Try to see if the tones that you use are correct, if the first light is too bright or too dark, in comparison to the face, of course. This takes time, so have a lot of patience and take your time. I find that I was overexcited to see this finished, and that made me lose my patience and I wasn't painting as carefully as I would like to. I don't know if there are teachers of this specific way of painting in Italy or elsewhere, I'm not sure. I think the best teacher is, of course, the painter who has painted these images himself, Fra Angelico in this case. He seems that he took his time and painted these hair locks with much diligence and detail, as if he had all the time of the world with him. After painting the first light of the hair, I will soften it a little bit, the way I do with the face. I will soften the light a little bit and try to see if this helps, if this is something that Fra Angelico did. It doesn't look bad. So... And after having blended the first light a little bit, as much as I can, to the proplosmos of the hair, I will again paint a grapsmo and I will try to again separate these forms and make them more distinct, in a way, of course, that Fra Angelico has painted. I try not to do anything by myself. I don't know why. They do look beautiful, amazing really, but they are very very complex. And now I'm painting the second light of the hair. It really was a very satisfying process and I will experiment a little bit more on the Italian early Renaissance and the painters there that painted with tempera. This painting, this angel gave me the idea to experiment in painting portraits of friends and relatives, of contemporary people, I mean, with egg tempera in this early Renaissance style. Some more highlights. I would love if you will be inspired to paint something like that, from watching this video. If you do paint something like that, please let me know at the comments below how your experience was. I know that most of my audience are iconographers and I'm sure you will find it very challenging and compelling, but also very satisfactory. Please let me know how your experience was and if you learned something out of doing this study. As always I would like to thank you very very much for being here and for supporting my channel by subscribing, by commenting. You can further support this channel on patreon.com, that would be really great. I try to keep this channel open for everybody and free for everybody and supporting me on Patreon would be really unbelievable. Anyway, this is the icon of Archangel Gabriel, this is almost finished by me. I can imagine how people must have felt when they saw the original one back in the 15th century. They must have been speechless from the beauty of this head. So, again I hope you paint very nice these days. Thank you for being here with me and have a blessed week. See you soon with another tutorial on religious painting. I'm glad to hear more from you. Have a blessed week. Bye.