Egg Tempera. Messy, difficult, addictive

Published by avrilejean at December 3, 2016

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Photograph showing palette for egg temera painting

A while ago I did a series of posts on painting with egg tempera. I’d finished the first one – this portrait of Ada Lovelace holding an x-box controller.

I was thinking it would be cool to take people who did brilliant work in science, and give them the distractions that the current batch of humanity have. I wonder if we’d have had the computer at all if Ada Lovelace, for example, was spending her time cosplaying or playing plants vs zombies? So i had plans to do more painting – but the pure logistics for painting in egg tempera has pretty much stopped me till now.

Ada Lovelace

Anyway, I found tempera difficult for many reasons, here are some.

Grinding the pigments is tedious and messy. Omg. I hate this bit. Your choices are grinding or not grinding, if you don’t, the paint is likely to get chunks and blobs in it. All the stuff I’ve read says ‘grind’. But it’s not just a one stop grind shop. Oh no. When you do grind, it’s with water, and then the paint dries out so you have to regrind your pigment for the next time you work.
You have to prepare the ‘canvas’ yourself with multiple layers of very specific home made gesso. It’s been difficult to source the materials, some art shops don’t sell them. Messy, difficult, time consuming. I only made four. One has cracked cause I didn’t store it carefully. Not sure if it can be fixed.
Setting out the palette is tedious and messy.
There is a lot of prep work laying out what you need. It’s not as easy as a palette and brushes – it’s scooping out pigment, preparing the egg, wiping everything.
You have to work rapidly. The paint dries as you lay it down. The paint on your palette lasts a bit longer but not too long. You have to have all your ducks on the wall before you start because walking away and coming back can mean your paint is dry in your palette when you get back.
You can’t save paint on your palette by any means. You can’t re-wet it or save it for use another day.
I have been told the paintings stink as they dry – I have not noticed this but I’ve only worked on small areas, and the paintings are in the back room where I don’t go as often.
You mix the paints as you go and I’m not yet good on judging thicknesses.
I’m also not good on judging how much pigment I will need per session, leading to wastage or under-supply.
I have to work out how to mix pigment to make different colours before using it and I’ve not been successful at this yet
Inking up first is also messy, welcome to ink streaked hands
You are supposed to meticulously plan your painting before hand, something I’m incapable of.
There are a lot of books out there that will tell you how to paint in tempera and they all pretty much say the same thing- ink your design carefully and then build up lots of layers on top of it so it shows through. Can I just say, yuck. NO.
I found as soon as you add white to your paint, you totally obliterate everything underneath it and so I was at a loss as to how to proceed once i’d obliterated all my careful under painting that I did at least attempt!

Anyway. I’d decided on and started a painting ages ago of Charles Darwin holding an Atari Joystick, but I really didn’t get into it. I started him in the same way as Ada and he spent a lot of time looking like a burn victim with under painted red raw face. I was loath to get back to him because I couldn’t face it at all.

Then the other day I got sick of using watercolour and didn’t feel like working in pastel or oil, so I fished him out, had a look, waited for the chickens to give me an egg, and I finished him up.

While painting him I’ve come to some conclusions about egg tempera that is going to make this process a lot more enjoyable

I have a lot to learn but I won’t get it from ‘how to’ books. It’s about practice, my own practice.
I am finding it challenging and enjoyable now I’ve got down the basics
I’m going to paint however the fuck I feel like and ignore the books.
I paint my way. which does not involve meticulous under-drawing or thin layers, it involves rough sketching out and subsequent over painting in fine detail as i get down to it
I’m not going to grind my pigments. There. I said it! I was dreading doing it and it was preventing me from doing ANYTHING. Bring on the gritty chunky bits. Who says a painting can’t have chunks in it. I say it can!
Work with the medium’s strengths and don’t lament it’s weaknesses. Learn to like the strengths, as I’ve just managed to do with watercolour.
Everything I do is messy anyway. Accept the mess. It’s not like my clothes are not already covered in paint, glue, and cat fur, right?

And with those decisions, I have started the next painting : Marie Curie holding a Guitar Hero controller. I have inked in a bunch of the darks and started on the underpainting and I think she will turn out a lot easier and less painful than the other ones.