Fresco Secco

If you've ever played with plaster-of-paris, you know how much fun it can be. I stumbled across a tutorial on dickblick.com for a fresco secco and I couldn't wait to try it. You simply take a piece of burlap, spread a roughly 1/4" layer of plaster over it and allow to dry and then paint or draw your artwork. This technique gives you a secco fresco or "false" fresco, as a true fresco is achieved by painting wet-on-wet, versus wet-on-dry. I used watercolors to paint my grapes on. After your image is on the plaster, you age it by carefully breaking it to create cracks. Once you have your desired look, you use school glue to fix it. The best part by far was breaking it to get the aged look. I really like the final product. It was a lot of steps and I don't think I'll be doing it anytime soon, but it was definitely fun once!