Cartoon - Full scale rendering/drawing from which the fresco is to be painted. Tracings of the cartoons are done on transparent paper. The edges of the images are perforated and used to place on top of the fifth layer of damp plaster (the intonaco) to use as a guideline for the finished painting.
Tracings of the cartoon are also used to transfer the drawing onto the "brown" (arriccio) plaster coat for the sinopia.

Post your questions/opinions about cartoons for fresco in this thread.

This detail is from the Cartoon for the Albuquerque Fresco by Ilia Anossov (appr. size of this detail is 4ft/5ft).

Hello Ilia
I love your cartoon. To me it seems more like a acomplete one color painting which stands for itself. My way of work is different however. I use to draw general plan of the figures and events without going into details to much. I also never trace my cartoons on the mortar but rather copy them freely by eyes. I also like to improvise during the work and do not hasitate to erase (removing acomplete giornata, intonaco and all..) when needed. It demands a very careful handling, on one hand, but enable (me) more freedom in attitude and performance. This example is adetail from a commissioned fresco that was performed that way.

Good Timing Yoram!
I have been waiting for Ilia to get back online because I am having problems transfering cartoons and pouncing. I usually use a light projector and/or grid but this is more difficult with fresco.

The problem is that the holes in the paper seem to be clogging. I have tried drafting mylar, bond paper, and tracing paper. The tracing paper seems to give the best holes (I am using 15 per inch - the coarsest wheel) but the mistake was the intonaco was a little too moist.

My friend, a frescoist called Ed Sawatzky, unfortunately not online, seems to have much the same background as you - trained in Florence, Mexico and Israel. He uses a wooden float on the intonaco and the rolls it out after painting with a seamless bottle or tube of steel he had made. He advocates using butchers paper and then tracing the lines with terre verde green earth pigment. This is a 16" x 16" and is a test subject. My reference is attached. You don't use a grid? Any tips?

I use the tracing paper, it is thin and does not damage the "skin" on the intonaco. Charcoal dust works fine to the point that i would wish to have less charcoal coming through, even with the fine pouncing wheel (large pouncer is to big for the fine detail). I do a small rendering, then transfer it to actual scale of a fresco onto the paper for the preliminary composition "to scale study". Then I make tracings and transfer on the new paper for the final cartoon. After the final is done, I make the new tracings for the fresco and reuse the old tracings for the sinopia.
I bit too many steps, the one may say, but lately I do the same even for the regular murals (except the "to scale study") - I call it the fresco method. Gives great results - after client sees the cartoons I have no "double checking and making sure" - I left along to paint in peace.

I have to show how to tell that the plaster is ready for the transfer - "picture" worth a thousand words, as people say - you can not measure it must be felt by fingers.
Alert! commercial interruption - our workshop link http://www.truefresco.com/workshop.
Also Ian (the plasterer) tells me when to start. Other ways you have to do some experiments, remember different paper gives different clues, make sure that paper does not "pull" the water from the plaster, this "pulling" will kill the "skin".

Gary, I really like those two girls!

Yoram, looks like you've built an outstanding reputation for yourself - from the sketch onto the wall, impressive. Any tips?

Ilia
http://www.truefresco.com/anossov

Hello
Gary your work is most beautiful. Try to work on a larger scale. One of the first things that I have noticed was that the result (impression) that you get watching the picture from your painting post, and which might look satisfying, looks very pale and monotonic from the distance of 5m, which is the point where it is seen by the spectators in a big hall. In the Stance Raphael in the Vatican you can observe this easyly by putting your eyes right where Raphael put his while painting and then watch it from the distance. I also try to built a character that will differ the Fresco from other paintings and demonstrate in some way (that I still keep looking for) the wholeness of this method. As for tracing, I just do not use it due to my adventures attitude and for all the reasons that you brought up.

I enclose an example that was made that way and which is a detail of my first big try.

Ilia
I have no reputation what so ever and all I do is attending competitions trying to present the interesting and somehow forgotten beautiful Fresco medium, and luckyly, maybe with divine (Trinira? Ellohim? Alla?) help, won it now for the 2nd time in two years. All the best
Yoram