Giving Egg Tempera a Try
Thursday November 30, 2006
After doing a weekend workshop on painting with egg tempera at the London Art Academy a couple of years ago, I concluded that it gives beautiful results but truly is a medium only for extremely patient painters. So I was intrigued to read about the experiences of Katherine Tyrrell (who writes the Making a Mark blog), at an egg tempera workshop at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Katherine says: "I'd recommend egg tempera painting for people who don't need quick results and who have the patience to work through quite a few mistakes before they get it right." and that she "came away with nothing but the utmost admiration for contemporary artists who produce large works in egg tempera". Read more about trying egg tempera...
See Also:
• How to Make Egg Tempera (from the Society of Tempera Painters)
• Choosing the Right Egg for Making Egg Tempera
• Practical Courses offered by the V&A
Photo: © Rosevita, Morguefile
Comments
I have long wanted to give egg tempra a try, but did not know what to use for pigments.
I tried egg tempera years ago in the ’70’s when Robert Vickrey’s work was popular. Not knowing where to get whiting, I used the stuff a greenhouse used on their glass to cut out the excess of sunlight. Somehow the paints did not stick and peeled off. Another disaster was painting with the eggwhite which supposedly was used to paint the blue of the Virgin’s gown called, I think, glare. It stank because the sulphur seems to be in the whites. I had to nail the painting on the outside wall. ”
If someone says this painting stinks,” I said, “I will not be offended.”
However, an interesting result from my readings about the medium was the discovery of distemper, which is using the hot rabbit skin glue which was part of the application to the panel as a paint medium. Mixing powdered pigments with the hot glue produced the most brilliant colors I have ever seen. The literature stated that preliminary sketches to tempera were painted in distemper but I have never noticed a drawing labeled “distemper” in all the books and art articles I have read. Does anyone know if distemper on paper disintegrates over five centuries?
Thank you so much for linking to my blog Marion. It would appear a lot of your readers are interested in egg tempera as I’ve had an awful lot of visitors coming from painting.about.com in the last few days!
I’ve also subsequently discovered that Daler Rowney make egg tempera tube colours. Their website includes a colour chart and a pigment analysis for each colour.