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In it's essence, fresco or fresco painting is an - application of natural mineral pigments to a surface on which a following chemical reaction takes place:

Ca(OH)2(s) + CO2(g) ----> CaCO3(s) + H2O(l)

Calcium Hydrate (burned lime stone or marble mixed with water) combined with carbon dioxide resulting in the formation of Calcium Carbonate - lime stone, marble. It is like "Painting with molten Marble".

from The Walls have The Word by Melchor Peredo


Being a student, I went at times to the Palacio Nacional to invite Diego Rivera to give a conference at the School "La Esmeralda", the voluminous artist himself moved-disturbed by the interruption, slightly in its scaffold, descending his protruding eyes towards me and skewered: Yes I will go, because that is a revolutionary school. "The Yuca" that more than his assistant he was from time to time his model, posed as the face of the black slave brought by the army of Hernán Cortez from Cuba. Diego was shading with smooth tones of vineyard black before applying color. Naturally, already on the wet plaster. According to Juan O'Gorman his great friend and communist comrade the master always worked this way, what gave him total liberty at the moment of the application of color. The curious thing if this resulted for him for the fresco; his easel paintings generally in oil were executed under the impressionist principle to exclude black in the shadows. What he did instead, then, was to shade with the Complementarie's. The amazing thing is that his frescoes, initially almost grisaille (monochrome) in color, in the end, black turns out to be almost imperceptible one. What is his secret?

Although the artist portfolio review is required to enroll in this private program, we do not discriminate and set harsh requirements that needed to be met by a potential student. The portfolio review is more for developing the individual (personal) structure of the workshop rather then a review of a professional or exhibition history of the student. This workshop has been attended by established artists that were offered fresco commissions by their patrons, university professors researching a possibility of adding fresco programs to their school's curriculum as well as mid-carrier artists or art students interested in more refined art education then is offered by mainstream art schools. This workshop takes place in Los Angeles at The Fresco School.

"Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone" is a phrase from the "Conversation with God" books. As an oil painter of 24 years experience, I am comfortable using a layered oil painting technique that I developed over the years. My recent fresco class with Ilia and Ian took me out of my comfort zone in oils and thrust me into the uncomfortable realm of a new medium.

Fresco Mortar or Plaster is made of high calcium lime putty and "aggregate" which, most commonly is washed river sand, marble meal, volcanic tuff or the combination of it. The proportion of the mortar or plaster mix generally is:

1 part lime putty : 2 parts aggregate (sand)

or

5 parts lime putty : 8 parts aggregate (sand)

Washed River Sand is the best aggregate for making a fresco plaster, it is clean from impurities such as silica, dust, clay, oranic particles, and the biggest enemy of all plasters - SALTs. This sand is also most likely to be of a right angular shape needed for "proper interlocking".

Traditionally there are five distinctive fresco plaster coats (from last to first):

more at:

Fresco-Techniques.com

Fresco School
is proud to announce it's new 10 week long fresco painting program in Los Angeles!

The program starts with two independent sessions:

Summer Session starts June 23rd September the 3rd.

Summer/Fall Session starts July 14 till October 1st

Only 4 students are accepted for each session.

Each session begins with 5 day intensive buon fresco workshop and continues with weekly classes, fresco painting and fresco plastering practice sessions.
Students will be provided with all necessary tools and materials for scheduled classes as well as an equipped fresco workstation is assigned to each student at our studio in Playa Vista (Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles) for the duration of the program (10 weeks) for independent and instructor assisted fresco practice.

You will learn and practice:

New dates for FrescoSchool's Los Angeles 5 day Professional Fresco Workshop have been announced - May 26th - 30th! This workshop takes place in Fresco School's new Playa Vista Studio in Los Angeles that iLia Anossov, school's founder and head instructor runs in association with Nathan Zakheim - a reknown fresco restorer and conservator.
to enroll please follow this link (click this line)

The new studio is not "new" to fresco and Fresco School - Nathan has completed 2 year long restoration of a 65 feet long fresco by Ramos Martinez which it was regularly visited by iLia and his students for Nathan's seminar on fresco restoration and conservation.

iLia and Nathan decided to join forces and after Nathans restoration project was finished the studio became Fresco School's homebase offering long term classes and "fresco workstations" and our popular "5 day Professional Fresco Workshop" (for upcoming May 26-30 class click here).

Karen Bakke travelled from Fargo, ND to take our Fresco Workshop this March, here is her review of the class:

New chapters have been added to Fresco-Techniques.com Website

Studio Setup.

Mostly some extra suff that you will need to have and ways to keep plaster and plaster dust away from the rest of the studio. Also you will need a few shelves for storing fresco colors and pigments - that old box housing a pile of paint tubes, just wont do.

Ideally you will have a few plastic shelving units (available in most home/office stores) with drawers size about 10" wide 3" deep and 14" long for your dry pigments. A separate heavy duty shelf with table for your plastering and about 6'X 6' section of the wall prepared with scratch and arriccio plaster coats for practice.

more at Fresco Studio Setup

Fresco Cartoon.

Fresco Cartoon is the most important step in creation of Fresco - it is your "blueprint" for all of the future work. The layout of giornatas, values, shadows, composition - all those and other elements are developed during this step.
"Cartoon" - full scale drawing of the future fresco. Cartoons are drawn on regular paper with pencil, graphite, charcoal, sepia chalk, etc., etc. The purpose of a cartoon is a thorough study and final rendition of the composition, light, shadow, details of the future fresco, it is a preparatory drawing taken to the next level. Correctly done cartoon is a "stand along" artwork. Although optional in other painting mediums, Cartoon is essential when paintng in Fresco not only as the main guideline for transferring the design onto freshly laid (fresco) plaster, but also as the main tool and method of understanding and orcestrating the steps for painting of the corresponding fresco.

more at Fresco Cartoon

Truefresco.org is proud to announce a new dimension to its ever growing web database of fresco knowledge - Fresco-Techniques.com. The website is a work in progress publishing the Internet version of iLia Anossov’s upcoming book on Fresco Painting Techniques. This website is another effort of iLia Anossov and the Fresco School’s team dedicated to foster the rebirth of fresco throughout the world, while adding another dimension to our online information. This site is intended to provide you with detailed guides for creating and recognizing frescos, whether it be Buon (True) Fresco, Secco Fresco or Faux Fresco. The website will give you the knowledge and on-hand tutorials to complete a wall fresco, fresco panel or decorative fresco tile.

The Fresco School is proud to announce a five day fresco workshop running from March 17th through the 21st. For this workshop The Fresco School continues their collaboration with renowned fresco conservator Nathan Zakheim. The combination of such knowledge and talent provides a rare and rewarding opportunity for the school’s students. It is impossible to predict when a class of this magnitude will be offered again.

The students who attend these classes become acquainted with all the steps of buon fresco painting: preparation of the cartoon, mixing colors, grinding pigments, building plaster coats, laying intonaco, methods of joining giornatas, and climate/moisture control. They will practice building color and working with values and shadows. The students will be shown how to achieve richness of color using transparent fresco paints through the use of verdaccio under-painting. In addition to learning the classical methods, the student will also be instructed in modern and experimental fresco techniques.

The Fresco School has held yet another successful workshop demonstrating their unique trademark, hands-on professional level instruction delivered with technical precision and personal passion that enables and inspires their students to create successful, true to classic buon fresco technique works of art the moment they enter the class whether the student is a professional artist, novice or an art student. .

This class was the first to take place in Baltimore, MD. Until this point students who wanted to take our classes had to come to the Los Angeles area. Due to the rapid increase in demand and invaluable efforts of K. J. Wolf a fresco artist and our East Coast Director, the school is in the process of expanding. This workshop held from August 18th to the 22nd took place in the sanctuary of a turn of the century Methodist Church in downtown Baltimore. The stained glass windows and massive stone walls created an atmosphere ideal for our students and the growth of their creativity resulting in 44 original boun frescoes.

by Sylvia Hunt, fresco artist

To the sounds of classical music, I sat down last Sunday, and I poured out my dry pigment of Verdaccio into a little pile, onto my glass top table, making sure as Wolf said, that everything was kept very clean and pure. I made a small well in the center of the pigment, and poured a small amount of distilled water into this center. There were no chemicals. Just the essence of the pure earth pigment, the water, and me. And so I began.
I started with Verdaccio, because to me, it is the ‘mother’ of all the paints and most importantly will be what I use for my underpainting. Verdaccio is a dark green, brown earth substance. I am mixing a limited amount of pigments for my palette; ochres, sienna, umber, red, terre verde, ultramarine, and bianco san giovani. In fresco, not many colors are needed, as the colors are kept simple, and beauty grows out of the underpainting and the different layers of paint which form depth.

Did you wonder how Pompeians did those deep seamless backgrounds of their frescoes?

New website featuring illustrated walkthrough of iLia Anossov's Dolphin Fresco went live today at http://DolphinFresco.com. Site features step-by-step photographs of the technique, materials used and guide.

Dolphin Fresco is a fine example of combining Ancient Pompeian Fresco method, when colored Intonaco Plaster was used to achieve uniformity of background color, Early Mediterranean laconic imagery design and Renaissance style of verdaccio underpainting is used to create a new interpretation of Classic Theme seamlessly integrated into contemporary setting.

The Fresco Shop at TrueFresco.com is undergoing a fresh beginning. With the advent of our new fresco school in Baltimore and the soon to begin restoration and fresco project at the St. John’s Cathedral, and the increasing demand for frescoes around the US, it became essential to create a complete and easily accessible resource for the hard to find fresco art supplies and materials needed by the fresco artist.

The artists at the first Baltimore workshop, held earlier this month, were the first to see some of the authentic fresco products that will become the foundation items that the Fresco Shop will sell.

With the help of Mitchell Nussbaum of Coppola Bros. Company, the renowned Italian plastering firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, TrueFresco.Com Fresco Shop will now be able to deliver these sought after fresco supplies to the beginning artist as well as for professional fresco painter. The Shop will be configured to supply both small and large fresco projects as a one-stop fresco shop.

"Cartoon" - full scale drawing of the future fresco. Cartoons are drawn on regular paper with pencil, graphite, charcoal, sepia chalk, etc., etc. The purpose of a cartoon is a thorough study and final rendition of the composition, light, shadow, details of the future fresco, it is a preparatory drawing taken to the next level. Correctly done cartoon is a "stand along" artwork. Although optional in other painting mediums, Cartoon is essential when paintng in Fresco not only as the main guideline for transferring the design onto freshly laid (fresco) plaster, but also as the main tool and method of understanding and orcestrating the steps for painting of the corresponding fresco.

This Spring and Summer our classes in Los Angeles Will be held at the following dates:

May 13th, Fri. - 17th, Mon
June 3rd, Fri. - 7th, Mon
June 17th, Fri. - 21st, Mon

These courses consist of up to five days of intensive instruction where you will learn how to create true (buon) fresco as artists have done for centuries. At the end of June we are scheduled to go to the Fauxcadamy Awards in Las Vegas to hold a "Fresco Painting - Contemporary Tradition" demonstration, seminar/lecture, and to judge the Awards' entries. Soon after the conclusion of these events we will begin a large scale fresco project in a church in Baltimore. These events will unfortunately keep our regular workshops schedule unclear for the rest of the summer and fall. Unfortunately, we will be able to enroll only 20 people for this set of classes - it is our policy to deliver the maximum undivided attention to each by keeping our workshops within 5-7 artists per class.

Workshop configurations consist of 1 to 5 day classes:
To enroll and/or learn more - click here
To see and hear via downloadable video interviews what others have to say about our program - use this link.

or start at our Fresco Workshop's home page http://FrescoSchool.com

This fascinating fresco demonstration is an excellent opportunity for you to get familiar with the creative process and concept of buon (true) fresco - painting on wet plaster. iLia Anossov, Nathan Zakheim, and Masha Zakheim will introduce their audience to the traditional method of the true (buon) fresco and erase most of the misconception about traditional buon fresco technique that one may currently have.

The event takes place on June 29th, 2004 at Venetian Hotel Las Vegas, Nevada as part of 2004 Fauxcademy Awards week.

This is the question that I encounter the most. The story of fresco painting began over 35,000 years ago in the caves of modern France where the Neolithic man applied natural earth pigments to the moist limestone walls of his cave to illustrate his life and beliefs. Of cause Neolithic man did not call his paintings frescoes. So as every civilization there after had own name for the technique used for the magnificent wall paintings found in it's most treasured environments, temples, public spaces and homes - the only technique that allows us to see those masterpieces thousands of years after they were created. Through the years this technique has been refined and now we know it as Buon (true) Fresco.

iLia Anossov is one of only a very small handful of contemporary fresco masters in the US. He maintains a studio loft in downtown Los Angeles that he uses to teach the techniques of true fresco painting to aspiring students. iLia is able to accomplish this through a team approach. Together with Ian Hardwick, plasterer extraordinaire and Glenn Fischer, pigment and production specialist - both spectacular artists in their own discipline - iLia breathes life into the age old art of true fresco.

for fresco workshop info/schedule go to: http://FrescoSchool.com

Our June 2003 Fresco Painting Workshop was exceptionally successful and proved to be a major event in contemporary fresco revival. Each student has completed a fresco that would challenge an artist with prior fresco experience, however for most of our class that was their first one. After over 3 years in operation "Nationwide Fresco Painting Workshop Program" has picked up speed and extended its class length from 2-days to 2-weeks of Buon Fresco Painting running bimonthly in Los Angeles along with workshops scheduled across the nation. During Los Angeles 2-week of Buon Fresco students can pick from several class offers, but our intensive 5-day Professional program is limited to 5-6 people per class. Our next class begins on August 7th (enroll here) and there is only one space left. There is a new highlight of Los Angeles Buon Fresco Weeks - lecture on fresco relocation/restoration Nathan Zakheim, a leading fresco restorer/conservator. iLia Anossov and Mr. Zakheim have joined forces to generate support for a major fresco painting project