Trojan Archer from Temple of Athena on Aphaia

Trojan Archer from Temple of Athena on Aphaia
Trojan archer from Temple of Athena at Aegina; recreated by V. Brinkmann and co. (click on image to see video of archer being painted)

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Experiment #1

While admiring the reconstruction efforts of Vinzenz Brinkmann, I believe that there are some nuances of painting on stone that are overlooked.  In painting with encaustic glazes on stone (marble or alabaster), subtleties of opacity and sheen are possible which are overlooked in painting flat areas of color on plaster casts.  Stone also has a luminosity, lacking in plaster, which can add a further depth of light and brilliance.

With the goal of showcasing the possibilities of encaustic painting on stone, I am undertaking a series of experiments.  The first experiment is a modest one, involving small applications of encaustic paint on an alabaster carving.  The goal of this experiment was to demonstrate the variations in opacity possible with encaustic, simply by diluting the pigment with more medium (wax and damar resin).  (Only one color, with varying amounts of medium, was used in the experiment.)  We have literary and visual (from vase-paintings) evidence of the application of encaustic paint to stone sculptures; I have updated the equipment a little by using an electric griddle rather than a metal vessel heated by charcoal.  I also used a blow dryer to heat the paint on the surface of the stone; this makes the paint much more malleable, and I presume that the ancient Greeks were able to heat the work surface too, almost as a matter of necessity.  A secondary goal of the first experiment was to demostrate the variations in surface sheen possible with encaustic; it is, after all, pigment suspended in wax, so it can be easily polished to a high gloss.






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Reference works

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