Steady Progress!

It has been a while since the last post, so there is so much to report on!!! Since the last post there has been plenty of progress made, a trip back to Sanok, adventures, meeting up with old friends, saying good bye to some of our new ones, a Holocaust Survivors remembrance march, visits from the press, and much, much more. So in this mighty post you will get to see the progress made over the course of the week. But first here's a status report: all the boards are now in Rzeszow being sized and assembled into panels, all the tracings so far have been completed, new images have been generated and are ready to be printed back in the states, test boards are in the works, all the final colors are being sorted out, and, drum role please, paint hits the zodiacs!

So first, here are some pictures to give a visual of where we are at so far:

The arrival of the rest of the panel boards, these are only some of them

To help keep the boards from moving they need to be sized to seal them

The boards are laid out to dry after each side gets sized

Nick is assembling the sized boards into a panel that is a section of a dome

The Jason's are setting aside a completed panel to keep the space organized and tidy

Case is creating curriculum for the painting, so turning the pigment and painting info into a nice, easy to read reference for everyone

Cailigh is creating a full scale image that gets printed and traced onto the boards

Everyone in computer world is making progress, Morgan gets to watch a show, and Craig gets a break

Marian is working on tracing the bottom of a dome and making any adjustments based on original images

Kasia works on tracing the image of the right medallion for the West Zodiac

Tracing a corner shoulder for one of the Zodiacs.

Creating small samples of color to test, and mixing colors to be used on practice panels

A few samples of student's practice panels, and examining the palette of colors to see what ones will work best

Zofia mixes a batch of one of the base colors

Rashin and Krista explain the painting processes and how to get started

Marta is working on her own practice panel. This helps her learn how to work with the paint and creates sample to be compared to documents to help determine the most accurate colors

Here are several Practice Panels with the color tests and Handshouse's original half scale paintings

Rick and Rashin decide which blues are the right ones

  So now to explain a bit more of what happens with each step starting with...

Panels and Prep:

Once all the boards arrived at the site they needed to be sized, assembled into panels, and gessoed before any tracing and painting could be done on them

Both sides need to be sized at the same time so the boards don't cup, so they were spread out to be done all at once

This is the rabbit skin glue that is used to size and is the binder for the gesso and paint as well

After all the boards have been sized on both sides the become panel sections. To make a good panel, the are pulled tight with clamps then have batons attached to the back to hold them in place

Once they are secure panel sections they get gessoed. Krista is applying several even coats of gesso, which is a mixture of chalk, zinc oxide, and rabbit skin glue

Part of the process is also removing the numbering system from the face of the boards and transferring them to the back. Jason teaches the littlest team member, Pola, how to use a hand plane to do just that

 Images and Tracing:

The computer gets used as a tool for creating enlarged full scale images to transfer onto the ceiling boards

The images are created using a proportional scaled dimensional drawing of the boards for each section, and high resolution images of the half scale images. The half scale images were originally hand drawn from original photographs of the Gwozdziec ceiling.

This is what gets created and printed, then later traced and transferred onto the board. This process allows the image to be double checked as well as making sure there is no distortion to important geometry.

Through every adjustment these photos are referred to for scale, placement, shape and so on.

The printed images are laid out and compared to the actual boards. Sometimes there are adjustments that must be made

Emily fine tunes the shapes and geometry when she traces it, a triple check

Jason L is checking the placement of parts to make sure everything is lining up

Nick traces an individual section from the medallion of one of the bottom dome sections

Ariel and Laura create a master drawing to be used as a template for all the zodiacs. Only the medallions are different.

Practice Panels, Colors, and Painting:

Before painting on the real boards, everyone makes a Practice Panel to learn tracing, test colors, learn to work with the paint, and practice replicating the images