Some information about the history and process of egg tempera painting

I've been asked what egg tempera is and how it's done, so I thought it would be good to include a little information here. I know there are more detailed descriptions and demonstrations online, but this should be enough for the merely curious!

The Masters used natural earth pigments, mixed with egg yolk so the colors would adhere to the surfaces being painted. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Da Vinci's "Last Supper" are two examples.

The best surface for this type of work is tempered masonite. The board is treated with dry gesso that included a special glue. Once the gesso is prepared, by heating to the boiling point and then cooling, it is brushed onto the surface, which is then dried and sanded. At least 3 coats are required, and each one needs to be sanded smooth.

I try to have several boards sized and prepared, with an idea of what I want to put on them. That way, when I'm ready to start painting, I can.

So, here's how it goes:

Use a fresh, brown egg if you have one. Crack the egg and then toss the contents back and forth between your hands to separate the yolk from the white. Pinch the yolk shell between your fingers, hold it over a small jar and poke a hole in it with a sharp knife, and catch the contents in the jar. Add about a half inch of water to the jar and shake to mix the egg and water. Put the jar in the refrigerator until you're ready to paint; the egg mixture will keep for several days.

So now, I get all my stuff together - board, brushes, egg mixture, temperas, a large container of clean water, and a clean white cloth for drying the brushes and testing color. You can buy tempera colors lots of places, but I usually order mine from the Daniel Smith catalog or www.danielsmith.com.

The next step is to turn the stereo up louder and get a beer - that's just the way it works! And now I'm really ready to paint. I use a tray covered in waxed paper, and start with a small amount of tempera, crushing all the lumps out with a knife. A few drops of water mixes with the tempera powder and then it's ready to use.

Egg tempera work is very laboring, but the end result is phenomenal. You can create extreme realism, even beyond photography, with textures and brushwork. For a good example of this, check out Andrew Wyeth. He did many of his works in egg tempera. You shape and mold your subject with light washes of paint, building layer upon layer, which forces you to concentrate on the subject the whole time. Egg tempera also forces me to stay consciously aware of the space or air between objects in the painting, creating a sense of depth in a two-dimensional work. But the most important thing is to stay loose as you paint, building up the layers or shaping your subject with brush strokes. There are no limits or boundaries, and there is always a discovery of new techniques to use in the next painting - constant development.

This painting, called "Windscent," got lots of attention at the
ArtWalk show in Sandpoint last summer, but I never liked the
perspective. When I took it home last month to repair a
scratch on the wolf's face, I decided to make a few changes. So now it looks like this:

It's far from finished at this point, but egg tempera is very flexible and forgiving. When "Windscent" is finished again, I'll put it on this page for comparison. I wonder if it'll still be "Windscent"....... There's also a lobster hiding in the new painting, and that will stay!

Another technique is to use the brush with just egg mixture on it to take paint away from a certain area, for example putting a blade of grass or a plant in front of a tree for a three-dimensional look. Notice the perspective created by the grasses in the foreground on the left above.