WORKSHOP: What is Old is New Again

Date: October 9, 16, 23, 30, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM–12:00 PM
Cost: $300 for the set of 4 days plus $75 materials fee to be paid directly to instructor.
Instructor: Alane Levinsohn

Workshop Description:
Take a deep dive into archaic art mediums. We’ll prepare at 4 traditional panels with rabbit skin glue and traditional chalk and pigment gesso. Then use the panels to paint in egg tempera, silverpoint, gilding and underpainting and glazing in oil. The first three of these techniques require prepared panels, so this session is mandatory to continue with a hands on experience.

• Session One: We’ll see how to prepare panels for traditional mediums. We’ll size with rabbit skin glue and apply 8-10 layers of traditional gesso and the following day (at home) sand until smooth (if needed). This will be the substate for the egg tempera, the silverpoint and the gold leafing. This session is mandatory for those sessions (reach out the Alane if you are unavailable for this session).
  
• Session Two: We will learn how to prepare egg tempera the traditional way with egg yolk and dry pigment. We will also learn a more modern shortcut that uses the egg yolk with pigment. We’ll learn the various ways of paint application: crosshatching, skumbling and glazing the undercolor and work on a painting of your choice. We’ll also work with metalpoint in this session: silver, gold, brass and aluminum are the typical wires, but our hands on will focus on silver. We’ll work with both silver and metal pads to achieve the look of the Renaissance masters and discuss how to preserve the metal as is, or encourage tarnishing for the warm browns of the masters. You’ll work on one of your prepared panels on a design of your choice.
  
• Session Three: We’ll gold leaf a panel. You can choose whether to gold leaf the entire panel or gold leaf a specific area within the panel to create either a flat or raised pattern. We will talk about grounds and their traditional relationship to the leaf. We’ll talk about Russian icons and their methods of creating raised patterns under the gold leaf to create the ornate raised motif in the halos around the heads.
  
• Session Four: Oil Painting. We will make our own oil pigments using dry pigments. There are several reasons to know how to make your own pigments - reducing toxicity by using archival but non toxic oils, mixing special colors that are otherwise unavailable and mixing a specific viscosity. We will explore making our own thickened linseed oil and using egg yolk as an additive to increase viscosity and brush stroke retention. We’ll also look at doing the underpainting in grisaille and/or verdaccio and using glazes to build up flesh tones that have an unsurpassed luminosity.
  

Supplies:
$75 materials fee to be paid directly to instructor.