Painting Courses in France

Renaissance Painting Workshop - Atelier Neo Medici:
Atelier Neo Medici offers two-month intensive painting workshops in the Aquitaine region of south-west France for art students and professional painters. These workshops are available in Spring (March-April), and Fall (October-November). Students are taught a Renaissance painting technique for contemporary artists known as the "technique mixte". The courses are taught in French and English.

Technique Mixte-Renaissance Painting Workshops :
2-month Painting Workshops: Spring (March-April); Fall (October-November)

Course hours: 20 hrs per week of studio instruction (total for the two months: 160 hrs)

Pelizzari teaches an approach to painting known as the "technique mixte", which has its antecedents with the early Northern masters (Jan van Eyck). This technique employs a tempera underpainting over which oil colours are glazed, enabling the artist to achieve a profoundly intricate level of detail and greater luminosity of colour than oil paint alone can produce.

Syllabus:
- Introduction of the "Technique Mixte"
- Discussion of materials and overview of the methodology.
- Preparation of the panel or canvas.; mixing gessos
- Students begin by drawing on the prepared ground with supplied pencils. Emphasis on draftsmanship: form, value, and detail.
- Subjects covered: Composition,perspective, scale and proportion, contour drawing and modeling by cross hatching, rendered shadows(chiaroscuro)

- Imprimatura : its role as a preparation for the lights- Introduction to the preparation of emulsion: formula and use.
- Working up the lights: Using tempera emulsion and white pigment, the student will model the forms and define the value range, from highlights to cool middletones.
- Working up the darks: A similar process is used with umbers to continue the modeling process from dark to middletone.
- Introduction to glazing and scumbling: the application of transparent oil glazes over the neutral tempera "monochrome" begins.
- Working with the glazes: a judicious juxtaposition of temperatures, tints and tones to heighten spatial illusion.
- Complexities abound: but oh such fun....such marvelous, wonderful, miraculous painting fun to be discovered!
- Finishing : Final heightening with a range of nuances; the expanded palette.
- Review and analysis; discussion: the technique and its use by the contemporary artist.