
Traditional painting techniques shaped the way I see art and painting itself. This article is about the man who taught me those techniques—Tadeusz Piotrowski.
Some time ago, I asked Tadeusz to write an introduction to my album. I wanted it to be about him, not me – because he taught me the techniques of the old masters. I never told him that I wanted to emphasize his importance and show how much I owed him.
The Old Masters’ Legacy and a Life in Painting
The traditional painting technique ended when paints were sealed into tubes and became widely available.
This change had its advantages — without paint tubes, Impressionism and other artistic movements might never have emerged. Today, using such paints is much easier, whether in schools or therapeutic workshops.
My life’s goal as a painter was to create one hundred paintings, each measuring 2 × 3 meters. I wanted to donate them to Native American communities, who have fascinated me since I was young and remain deeply important to me. Because of this, the paintings had to be created using the best materials and the most refined techniques.
During my studies, I became interested in the techniques of the Old Masters — methods that had long been forgotten by most painters. I wanted to incorporate them into my own work. But I wasn’t alone in this pursuit.
After graduation, I co-founded the Cennino Cennini Independent School of Painting with a group of friends. We began experimenting.
Our first goal was to create a perfectly smooth, mirror-like gesso ground on a wooden panel. After many trials, we finally succeeded. The surface was so polished that you could see your reflection in it — some even joked that you could shave in it.
It was said that Rembrandt’s binder was so thick that a brush could stand upright in it. We took this as a challenge and set out to recreate such a dense medium.
We found the instructions in Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte (The Craftsman’s Handbook). Following his method, we thickened linseed oil in a lead pan — a practice rarely used today. This process resulted in an oil that dried remarkably fast and gave paints exceptional depth.
The oil still needed to be filtered through powdered charcoal. Students from our school would go out searching for this material in old campfires — sometimes deep in the forest.
One day, while scavenging near a warm fire, they were approached by a group of rough-looking men — likely alcoholics — who assumed they were planning to filter denatured alcohol. Concerned, they warned them, “Don’t go down that road.”
Of course, they had no idea the students were gathering charcoal for refining linseed oil.
In Cennini’s treatise, I found a passage that particularly struck me. He once told a fellow painter, “I couldn’t give you anything better” — as he handed him a bottle of sun-thickened linseed oil.
I have often repeated this phrase myself while gifting my own sun-thickened oil to fellow painters.
If we wish to recreate the color depth of the Old Masters, we must have an exceptional varnish.
Most technical manuals suggest dissolving resin directly in turpentine, but this method results in a cloudy varnish. In our school, we dissolved resin purely in turpentine fumes, in a dark room.
The process took longer, but the results were spectacular — we produced crystal-clear varnish.
To secure canvas onto a frame, we used cobbler’s nails — tiny nails with wide heads and incredibly sharp points. During martial law in Poland, these nails were nowhere to be found. Twenty people were searching for them.
Finally, one student discovered them — of all places — in a funeral home. Our dedication and efforts paid off.
We stretched our canvases using pre-shrunk linen, primed them following centuries-old recipes, and used our own handmade binders and varnishes. With all of this in place, we could finally unleash our creativity, painting exactly as the Old Masters did.
So, in the end, we truly did preserve the old technology.
One of the most fascinating achievements of our school was mastering the art of cutting quill pens, so they could be used exactly as they were in the past.
I have never seen a properly functioning quill pen in any historical or documentary film.
The difference between the quills seen in movies and my properly cut quill?
I can write an entire A4 page with a single dip of ink, while actors on screen struggle to write more than three lines.
In the Prado Museum, there exists a manuscript with an ornamental flourish measuring 28 cm in length.
Microscopic analysis confirmed that it was drawn in a single stroke, without lifting the quill from the paper.
Many people wonder: how is it possible that a quill could hold so much ink?
Simple — they don’t know Cennini’s recipe.
The first time I read his instructions on preparing a quill, I was confused — he kept repeating that the pen had to be “cut,” “cut,” “cut.”
Only later did I realize that Cennini used multiple different prefixes for the word “cut” — which I had initially overlooked.
The quill had to be: cut, split, trimmed, carved, and shaped.
In my rush to unlock the secret of the quill, I had read all these steps as if they were one single instruction.
Tadeusz Piotrowski 1954–2023
→ Tadeusz Piotrowski’s School of Traditional Painting Techniques
→ Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte on Wikipedia