A MODERN APPROACH TO EGG TEMPERA

Transcription

1 A MODERN APPROACH TO EGG TEMPERA Celebration of the Egg Egg Tempera on gesso panel 8 x 10 by GAINOR ROBERTS

2 MAKING PAINT This is what pigment looks like when it comes from the various pigment suppliers. There are many sources of pigment online and various grades and regions in the world offer unique and glorious colors that are not offered by paint manufacturers. I particularly like pigments from the Luberon Mountains of southern France. The deposits of ochre are very beautiful and the mining of the ore and pigments is protected by the French government. We buy pigment by volume or by weight. We only use a very small quantity in our paintings, and a little goes a very long way. A small jar of pigment has lasted me for many years.

3 Plastic Jars for Pigment Pastes MAKING PAINT CONTAINERS FOR PIGMENT PASTES I used to use baby food jars but I now favor plastic containers with tight fitting lids. It doesn t matter what you use, but the metal lids of the baby food jars rusted out in only a few years. I keep the small jars in a plastic container with a very small amount of water added, and the pigment pastes stay wet for a very long time. The photo to the right shows pigment dispersions that I buy from suppliers and use directly from the bottle. These are a wonderful time and effort saver, and several suppliers have great products! However pigment dispersions have limited selections of colors and if you want exotic pigments you will have to deal with making paint the old fashioned way. These are pigment dispersions from several different suppliers.

4 ALWAYS WEAR A MASK AND GLOVES WHEN HANDLING RAW PIGMENTS! The manufacturer will make sure to let the buyer know which ones are considered toxic. Yes, some pigments are extremely dangerous and today there are so many pigments available there is no reason to fool around with lead and arsenic based pigments at home or in the studio. My advice is to substitute something else for those few colors. But even with pigments from clays and other benign sources, you must wear a mask and gloves to avoid inhaling the dust. Once mixed with water the dry powder will stay put and you can pull off your mask.

5 The Cobalt Green (toxic color) came in a large plastic bag. I cut the knot off, and then I used a paper coffee filter as a funnel to put the pigment into the storage jar I had prepared in advance. On the cover of the jar I write the name of the supplier, the color, and a number I use to identify my colors to make it easier for me to find what I m looking for.

6 GRINDING PIGMENTS Many pigments don t need grinding at all. They are so fine and powdery when they come from the paint manufacturer I can mix them with water and put them into their jars without any grinding. Some are so impossible to grind I buy dispersions. In the demonstration below I am trying out my new Lapis Lazuli.

7 I pour the pigment into the mortar and pestle. The amount varies but at least 3 or 4 tablespoons, and sometimes more. I usually don t use all my pigment, just in case something goes awry.

8 I add small quantities of distilled water stirring with a palette knife until the pigment is paint-like. Then if it is a very grainy pigment I use the pestle and start grinding the pigment. A few pigments resist getting wet, so in this case I add a few drops of alcohol.

9 When it looks done, or when a paintbrush full of pigment tested on a sample panel looks OK, I use a rubber scraper, or flexible palette knife to scrape the pigment paste into my jar. The ground pigments last a long time, but they can dry out, so I open them to add water from time to time.

10 I m done, except for the cleanup. I have found that Comet or Ajax, a scrubber sponge, and lots of water works best. It is very important to make sure all the pigment is cleaned up for the next color. It is not fun picking color out of the mortar when you have blue mixing in with yellow.

11 EGGS I usually try to find organic eggs, but if I am lazy or in a hurry the regular eggs in my refrigerator will do just as well. I honestly don t notice much of a difference. Brown or white seems not to matter at all. It took me quite awhile to learn to do my eggs without getting it all over myself and half the kitchen, but now I have perfected the technique of picking up the egg with thumb and forefinger, as most of the directions tell you.there is a trick to it, of course!

12 I like to spend a moment looking at my egg before opening the shell. It is such a marvel of engineering! 1 You can crack open the egg any way you like, but I have found that using a sharp, rather heavy knife, allows me to crack it open all the way around the equator of the egg, resulting in a neat separation of the two halves. Bits of broken shell can easily pierce the yolk and when mixed with the white it is ruined. 2

13 I transfer the whole mess to my hand and let the white drain out into a bowl or into the sink. The idea is to remove all the white, and have a yolk that is contained in it s sac. 3 Drying the yolk sac can be a tricky business and it is here that most of the time the yolk can break. I roll the yolk around a soft paper towel (Viva Brand works well), pushing it to the edge of the towel. 4

14 Once the yolk is at edge you can fold the paper towel around the egg. Alternatively, you can use the paper towel to dry your hands, rolling the yolk back and forth until it, and your hands are dry of all the whites. 5 I use a toothpick to pierce the egg sac. Any sharp object will work just as well. If your yolk breaks in the paper towel you still can salvage enough yolk to make plenty of egg medium for one painting session, by getting it over the jar quickly and squeezing it out of the paper towel.. 6

15 The more difficult method, but the one that is described in all the books, involves picking up a dried yolk sac in thumb and forefinger and suspending it over the jar and stabbing it with your piercing tool. To do this you must have the yolk dry and your hands as well. This method took me years to figure out. Once mastered I felt that I had arrived in some secret society! 7 Whichever method you use the idea is to get the yolk into the jar with the least amount egg white or foreign matter. 8

16 9 The egg yolk in the cup is mixed with distilled water using about the same amount as there is egg yolk. The amount is not critical but you definitely need to cut the yolk with the water and then shake it up to mix it well. Some recipes call for only one teaspoon of distilled water. Refrigerated egg medium can last for a few days (you will know if it has gone bad!) and one yolk is more than enough for several painting sessions.

17 GESSO PANEL Gesso panels are made with real gesso, not acrylic gesso that we buy in the art stores. Gesso is glue, water and whiting (calcium carbonite, marble dust, or some other similar substance). I have made my own and it isn t worth the effort! I buy my panels from True Gesso a company in New Mexico that makes very fine panels. Ampersand also makes a suitable panel for use with Egg Tempera called Claybord.

18 GETTING READY TO PAINT The palette is laid out with pea-sized amounts of pigment paste. I add distilled water, then I add equal amounts of egg medium to the paint and stir. Occasionally some pigments require some more mixing which can be done on a glass palette with a palette knife to make the tiny grains of pigment smaller so they don t add tiny bumps to the finished painting. I m not such a purist that this bothers me much, but some pigments are so grainy I use pigment dispersions instead. Pigment dispersions are really nice! The paint manufacturers make a solution of pigment, water, and an additive that keeps the mix in suspension so all you need to do is shake up the bottle, take the cap off, squirt a bit into the palette cup, add egg and you are ready to go. It is a real time saver. You can buy sets of pigment dispersions and individual bottles. Some of the more exotic pigments are only available in powder form and the dispersions don t come in a huge variety of colors, but you can buy dispersions that are very fine and will suit most Egg Tempera artists needs very well.

19 THE PAINTING I start with a piece of tracing paper on which I make my initial drawing, paying attention to composition and placement within the size of my panel. You can t change your mind later. My preferred method of transferring my drawing is to tape the drawing down to the board. Using a silverpoint tool I trace under the lines of the drawing making light marks on the panel. Silverpoint will make marks on traditional gesso panels. On occasion I will use an 8H pencil (very hard) to make my initial drawing, but I am careful to use it lightly. I don t want graphite to mix in with the paint. Sometimes I use my own transfer paper which I make with pigment mixed with alcohol painted on tracing paper. Once I am satisfied with the transfer I use the silverpoint to further develop the drawing and design elements. You can see the result of my initial drawing in silverpoint to the left.

20 After mixing up my colors with egg yolk and water I select a fairly large brush and lightly wash in areas of the painting. I start with the darks and leave the highlights blank. Some Egg Tempera painters start with a grisaille using India ink. The shellac in the ink seals the gesso panel and gives a different surface to work on. I don t like this method, but you should try it once to see how it works for you. (An excellent step-by-step in India Ink is presented in Altoon Sultan s book, The Luminous Brush). The silverpoint does not bleed into the paint. Very often I will use a complementary color to make my initial wash of the drawing. If I am painting green I would select a burnt sienna or red earth color for the first step here. Because the apple was so delicate I decided not to lay in a complementary wash, so I used an approximation of the greenish yellowish apple flesh for my first step.

21 Be careful with the amount of water on your brush. Always work with a rag or paper towel (one Egg Tempera artist likes rolls of cheap toilet paper!). You will have a semi disaster on your hands if globs of water sit on the gesso panel long enough to eat through to the Masonite backing board. It happens sometimes that too much water will dissolve paint through several layers. This can be repaired. Leave it alone until everything is dry and then touchups can be done, but a hole in the gesso panel can only be repaired with more gesso and it might be very difficult to get it even with the surface. The photo to the left shows the completed underpainting. I have left the highest lights open to the white gesso panel.

22 Switching to a smaller brush I begin to develop more intense colors in the dark areas of the painting. The paint is now laid in over the wash in small hatching strokes. You will find the paint dries very rapidly and does not lend itself to being pushed around. Modeling of the forms can be done by paying close attention to the values you use and layering one value upon another. Hatching and stippling creates the illusion of modeling and blending that you can get in other mediums by working wet into wet.

23 this close detail shows the layering of the paint as well as the small hatching strokes of paint. The brush you select can actually be quite large if you use a good quality Kolinsky Sable, or synthetic brush that has a fine point and a good belly for paint. (The gesso panel can be rough on brushes so I buy cheap!)

24 The light areas are now calling out for attention and they must be adjusted for value and color. Use white paint! Titanium white is thick and opaque. Use it to get lovely muted tints of color in those highlighted areas.

25 It can take many sessions to fully develop the final egg tempera painting. There are alternative ways to paint in egg tempera, instead of the tiny hatching strokes. However, I will leave those methods for you to discover yourself. I enjoy hatching, and layering! I mix my colors freely on the palette as I go adding a little of this and a little of that, until the end.

26 Finally after many more layers the finished work is ready for a couple of coats of egg wash as a final glaze. I often will glaze the painting with egg medium to solidify the painting during the painting process. It seems to pull everything together and gives the final painting, a sheen, which can later be buffed with a soft cloth. A tip: make sure your paint is dry before glazing with the egg wash.