My "Severan Tondo"

[Tertius Mummius]

Working on my painter's impression, the first real project I tackled was my very own Severan Tondo, which I wanted to paint after the original allegedly in the Berlin Museum of Antiquities (I even managed to visit the museum and questioned every single guard and clerk with a postcard I bought at its very own shop, but they denied knowing anything about it). Here's the Wiki entry for it, anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severan_Tondo

Before I went to put color on wood, I took what I had as "originals" - several scans and pics from the net - and looked for traces of anything not visible on first sight, torturing the pics with what contrast and sharpen filters photoshop could muster. Then I aquired a wooden disk of roughly a roman foot in diameter, scrubbed it with brimstone and washed it carefully with gypsum-diluted water. The outlines I drew with red chalk - careful not to apply too much pigment but rather leave colored scratches in the surface. Then the good old hour-long procedure of mixing and remixing the colors with egg white, linseed oil and natural pigments began (the powdered ones by Claré, mainly ochre, siena, green earth, pozzuoli red - as I don't want to die of lead poisoning I chose off-the-peg gouache white for white).
After that, it was fairly easy, painting from light to dark layers with some white accents added at last. Obviously, the antique artist focused on the eyes and primarily on Septimius; as I did not want to "copy" the picture but wanted to do it my-way-had-I-had-it-then, I gave a bit more attention to Iulia Domna's eyes and, of course, did not scratch off Geta after I finished.
Of course, there are some details I missed when I compared my Tondo again with the pics of the one in Berlin. Septimius has a third layer of laurel on his head, there are lots more of white streaks on the dark elements of clothing indicating light reflections on silk or something, and the parents' heads are way larger, almost filling the upper half of the Tondo completely.

But anyway, it's the first picture I made, and I want to share it with you.

[Folkert van Wijk]

Very well don Jan!
That is some great roman painting, I bet this is not the first time your holding a brush!
One can tell why you shosed to portray a painter.

[Arminius Primus]

Ave,

Not that I am an art historian but you sure impressed me !! That is a very fine piece. Given that the original has survived this long , I guess there are no issues with the tempera separating from the wood. I have watched some monks here in the balkans creating icons and they used local pigments and did the whole mixing with the egg white process. That in itself is extremely labor intensive, there are color issues, and you don't make a lot of colors at a time ( at least they didn't)

Did you do any other preparation to the wood surface ?, The icon painters built up layers of something and I think they sealed the wood first with bees wax. Would that be any way close to how the original piece was done??

Once Again, a tremendous accomplishment.

Regards from Scupi, Aminius Primus aka Al

[Martin Moser]

Good work!