Fresco & Chalk Painting

From Ross King's "The Pope's Ceiling":

"The term fresco, meaning "fresh", comes from the fact that the painter always worked on fresh- that is, wet- plaster. This called for good preparation and precise timing."

Michelangelo's concern was the curing time of the plaster and how much "open" time he had to work a particular section of his design, because after the plaster cured, you couldn't work the image any further than "twelve to twenty-four hours.

Since after this period the plaster no longer absorbed the pigments, it was laid down only in an area that the frescoist could complete in a single day, known as a giornata (day's work).

Street painting or chalk painting is almost always choreographed as a one or two giornata all day festival here in California, where each artist needs to finish his or her work by the end of the event because the streets are washed clean that same night. Street painters, like frescoists, "work against the clock" to complete their designs, though for opposite reasons. The frescoist works in a medium designed for eternity, the street painter works just for today. Either way the creation of the artwork becomes a performance in itself, requiring careful planning, what I call strategy, to not only make it "art" but also to make it on time. Michelangelo pushed back the completion date of the Sistine Chapel several times before he was done, keeping his work covered from below so no one could observe the process. Even Pope Julius II was kept off the scaffolding to keep him from seeing the work until it was "done". Street painters, on the other hand, typically work in front of an audience of festival-goers and passers-by like I did this morning on Ch.7 KNSD's "Streetside" segment with Kimberly King to promote this weekend's Corso Degli Artisti street paintng event combined with the annual Little Italy Festa (sponsored by Precious Cheese for the same five years I've been doing event). The piece I did is the only other finished painting by Michelangelo known to us besides the Sistine Chapel frescos, and was a great warm up for the Sistine Chapel ceiling detail I will be painting in chalk as this year's featured artist at Corso Degli Artisti. Here's the image before today's segment: This is when the segment was done: I used some of the same techniques on this piece that Michalengelo himself used in the Sistine Chapel and I will be using tomorrow and Sunday in Little Italy. This piece will be displayed (and hopefully already finished) where I'll be working as the featured artist making a piece of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in chalk for the Little Italy's permanent outdoor art collection. Next epidode I'll have pictures of the beginining stages and a continued discussion of fresco/chalk technique.