At last I get to introduce THE EGGS in this whole excercise.
We have a lot of eggs. These guys eat a lot and produce a lot of eggs. The last lot of chooks I had, got killed by a fox when I forgot to lock them in (GUILT GUILT GUILT). Melbourne has one of the worlds highest urban fox populations in the world. They are feral and eat your chooks if you don’t secure them at night! I built a massive chicken run so they are safe now. Anyway. Lots of fresh eggs.
That’s their enclosure to their left and behind that, some corn that REALLY needs to have been pulled out.
Eggsellent, I hear you say.
I got it all ready, including a pin to prick the egg yolk.
You crack the egg, and hold onto the yolk, which you then prick with a pin. You want the middle yellow bit of the yolk not the yolk sack. (What a concept. Yolk sack).
You can see my giant Oscar fish, Bhopal, there in the tank in the background watching the operations in the next picture. He spends his whole life sitting in the bubble stream and watching me cook or do stuff in the kitchen. I got him when I got back from India, really enjoyed my time in Bhopal and other central Indian cities, I got two oscars I called Bhopal and Mandu. But I digress!
(The cats got the leftover egg).
Add the same amount of water to the egg, and I’ve got that ready. I kept this in the fridge for a few days and used some later too, then chucked it. Someone from the Melbourne artist group I’m in on facebook, advised that drying tempera can smell like rotting egg. Good oh. Guess it goes into the back room.
So this was my first attempt at mixing up the pigment and I made it far far to runny, I also made too much.
I went to the picture and painted in the under painting. One coat is far too thin – especially when you make it to thin anyway.
So i did some more and also did a bit of yellow ochre and the darker bits in blue.
Under painting done. Not overly happy with it, but this is my starter piece after all!
I made the blue a bit too thick, the rest a bit too thin. I can see that this is going to be a very big learning curve on what and how to do to make paints I’m happy with.
All the posts in this series:
Egg tempera I – preparing the panels
Egg tempera II – transferring the picture
Egg tempera III – Grinding the pigment
Egg tempera IV – inking and cross hatching
Egg tempara VI – laying down real colour
Egg tempera VII – finished Painting
