How To Paint With Egg Tempera
Hi, I’m Nat Wildish. There are a number of ways to paint with egg tempera. Below, I explain and demonstrate how I paint with egg tempera. If you’d like to jump to a specific topic, here are links which take you directly to them:
- What Is Egg Tempera Painting?
- Sketching The Drawing
- Providing A Solid Support For The Painting
- Preparation Of The Base For The Egg Tempera Paint
- Prepping The Artwork Surface
- Adding Pigments To The Egg Tempera Base
- Applying Egg Tempera Paint
- Using Layers of Egg Tempera Paint To Create Textures and Colors
- Painting Sky And Water With Egg Tempera
- Layering Egg Tempera Paint
- How To Frame Egg Tempera Paintings on Paper Adhered To Glass
- Durability of Egg Tempera Paintings
I hope that you’ve found this information on egg tempera painting helpful. You’re welcome to look around the DweezelJazz Art Gallery to see more egg tempera paintings by Nat Wildish. And if you have any questions I’d be glad to hear from you, just leave a comment! Cheers,
What Is Egg Tempera Painting?
Egg Tempera is an old painting method. It was used by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and also in the Byzantine Empire. During the Italian Renaissance before 1500 AD almost every painter used egg tempera, including Michelangelo.
The egg tempera technique uses egg yolk to bind the pigments for painting. 
As can be all too clear when it comes time to do the dishes, egg yolk dries quickly and if left for some time, is very hard to remove. This property is used to the painter’s advantage by mixing colors with it to make paint.
Egg yolk cracks when left to dry in a thick droplet.
To avoid cracks in a painting it’s necessary to apply it in thin layers. In order to achieve this, only a small amount of egg tempera paint can be applied to the paintbrush. As the egg yolk dries very quickly in these quantities it is therefore essential to this technique that small amounts of paint are applied in short brush strokes. Almost immediately after applying the paint it’s dry enough to apply more straight on top of it without lifting what’s already there.
It’s clear that the characteristic features of egg yolk, and how it dries, largely define the egg tempera technique. The paint is applied in short brush strokes, one thin layer over another until there are many layers. Different colors with varying levels of opacity can be applied in the different layers. To achieve a smooth appearance the brush strokes can be applied in all different directions so that no one direction is given preference. And any number of textures can be created, for example by making the strokes cross-hatched, or by having them all flow in the same direction.
Egg yolk dries as a crystalline substance, and on its own, allows light to pass through it and also to be reflected back up through it. It acts almost as a jewel, bouncing, diffusing and reflecting the light that enters it. With pigments present in the egg yolk, the light will act differently according to the absorbing properties of the pigments and their opacity.
Light entering the painting is scattered from each layer, and brush stroke, in an infinite variety of ways. Some of the light is scattered and reflected back before it reaches the bottom surface of the painting, some is bounced back from the base of the painting. If a bright white surface is used as the base of the painting this can reflect up into the painting, giving it an almost back-lit feeling. The result is a light-filled, almost luminescent, bright work of art.
As you might gather from this description, painting with egg tempera is a slow and very painstaking process. It requires meticulous attention not only to the detail of the subject matter but also to how the medium should be applied. An advantage of this technique is that it allows the artist to create paintings of incredible detail and accuracy.
There are many other binding agents used to make paints, including gum arabic (used in watercolor paints because it dissolves easily in water), oil, egg white, and casein (a milk protein). Around 1500, the use of oil paints largely replaced egg tempera. Oil paint can be applied in thicker and larger amounts allowing for much faster application, and therefore oil paintings often have a much deeper color saturation.
One great advantage egg tempera paintings have is that once they’re set, egg tempera paintings don’t change. Oil paints darken, yellow and become transparent with age. Egg tempera paintings don’t fade or change color; they’re permanent. Examples from the first few centuries AD still exist. Here’s one of my (yes certainly more recent than centuries ago!) paintings.
There are a number of ways to paint with egg tempera. This is what I do:
Sketching The Drawing
Pencil drawing on paper
I make a drawing in pencil on hot pressed Fabriano Artistico extra white 100% cotton watercolor paper. The cold pressed paper isn’t as smooth as the hot pressed; the smoother paper provides a better surface for the egg tempera paint.
Then, with diluted Winsor & Newton Calligraphy ink (using distilled water to dilute the ink), I redraw the image and erase the pencil lines. This allows being able to see the drawing later on, without it being visible on the final painting.
Inked artwork glued with archival wheat paste to tempered glass.
Providing A Solid Support For The Painting
It’s necessary for an egg tempera painting to be on a rigid surface so that the paint doesn’t crack. Egg tempera paint uses egg as its base, and egg dries in crystalline form. It cracks if it’s painted on too thick, or if the surface its on bends. Using archival wheat paste, I glue the paper onto tempered glass, as you can see in the photo above. Tempered glass is totally non-toxic, doesn’t warp and looks very pretty.
I have put glass that has paper glued to it with archival wheat paste in the bath tub to soak to try to get the paper off. After leaving it for several hours I found that I still had to scrape vigorously in order to get the paper off. I decided to see what would happen if I soaked it, took the glass and paper out without scraping, and then let it dry. The paper dried just as if I’d never soaked it, and it was still completely stuck to the glass.
Archival wheat paste is a very impressive way to firmly, if not almost irreversibly, adhere paper to glass! It has the added advantage of being non-toxic, non-acidic and will not damage the artwork or paper in any way, and it doesn’t deteriorate over time.
Preparation of the Base for the Egg Tempera Paint
At this point it’s time to make the base of the egg tempera paint: egg yolk mixed with a very small amount of water.
Preparation of egg tempera paint base
1. Crack the egg (preferably use ‘bio’ or ‘organic’ eggs) and remove the white, keeping only the egg yolk.
Separating the yolk from the white
2. Place the yolk on a tissue, I use a couple of sheets of toilet paper.
Separated egg yolk
3. Pierce the thin (but sometimes rather resilient) transparent sac around the yolk.
4. Squeeze the yolk gently and pour the orange-yellow liquid into a small jar.
Pouring egg yolk into a jar
Steps 3 and 4 ensure that only the yolk itself is included in the paint mixture, providing a very smooth base for the paint.
5. Add approximately half a teaspoon of water (preferably distilled water), it varies according to the size of the egg.
Add water to the yolk
6. Stir.
What you’re after is a mixture of egg yolk and water that looks a light creamy color. And that has the thickness and viscosity so that when you lift the teaspoon out from the mixture you get one or two drops leaving the spoon.
Egg tempera base of egg yolk and a small amount of distilled water
It’s always better to add small amounts of water and to keep adding until you reach the correct consistency. It becomes very easy with practice and this whole process only takes a few minutes once you’re used to it.
This is all there is to producing the base for painting with egg tempera.
Prepping the Artwork Surface
Now the paper, with the ink sketch on it, is ready to be prepped for painting with egg tempera. This is done by painting three layers of the egg tempera base evenly over the entire surface of the paper. This must be done with thin layers, applying a little with the brush and spreading it evenly, just like when painting with egg tempera, so that it doesn’t crack when it dries. Essentially this is painting with egg tempera, just without any coloring pigment in it.
Artwork surface prepped for painting with egg tempera
You can click on this image to see it larger. This paper has been prepped with three layers of egg tempera. I also had started painting on it, but this is the only photo I had of prepped artwork. You can see the distinct yellow coloring of the egg tempera base on the page – this vanishes after some days in normal light.
At first an egg tempera painting can appear a little dull because of this egg yolk coloration, but once it fades, the image left is nothing less than stunningly bright and colorful. This is one of the huge bonuses of painting with egg tempera, and in addition, if light-fast color pigments are used in the egg tempera base, then these colors don’t fade or become yellow over time like oil paints do.
My Art Work Space
Adding Pigments to the Egg Tempera Base
Traditionally artists have ground their own solid pigments, making them into a smooth powder, which they then mix into the egg tempera paint base, the mixture of egg yolk with a small amount of water. The egg provides the oily base, while the pigment colors the artwork.
Grinding pigments can be a highly toxic process and requires safety precautions to prevent inhalation of the powder and from absorbing it through the skin. It can also be a fairly time-consuming activity and requires some organization and storage space; often the pigments need to be stored in a liquid in jars.
I decided to go for a ready-prepared, light-fast, relatively non-toxic approach. I use Winsor & Newton Artists’ watercolors.
Winsor & Newton Artists' Watercolors
I keep them in plastic bags to prevent them from drying out.
The egg yolk temporarily contributes a yellow color to the paint and this can make it a little difficult to estimate what the color will turn out to look like on the painting once the egg yolk yellowness has vanished after some days. So I made a color chart just using the watercolor paint with water, and I use this for reference when choosing which color to use for painting.
My Reference Color Chart
Using this watercolor paint reference chart removes most of the guesswork. I find this works a charm for estimating the final color outcome. Although, you do need to expect additional depth and brightness of color on the painting because it’s combined with the egg tempera paint base and not just water.
I usually prep one egg yolk for the day, very occasionally two. First I put a dab of Winsor & Newton watercolor into the bottom of one of the pallet wells. Then I use a small spoon to fill much of the rest of the palette well with the egg tempera base from the jar. I use an old paintbrush to mix the watercolor pigment with the egg tempera.
Painting Palette, glass of distilled water, egg tempera paint base and paintbrushes.
At the side I have a very small (shot) glass with distilled water in it. I use distilled water for the entire painting process.
Distilled water
If the room humidity is low then, at intervals through the day, it’s often necessary to add a little more water to the egg yolk and pigment mixtures in the pallete wells.
I paint with watercolor Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable brushes. Are you getting the impression I rather like Winsor & Newton? I got a lovely watercolor box set on sale a few years ago and that set me onto them.
As the day progresses, more and more colors are added to the palette and colors are mixed with others.
Painting with egg tempera this way is efficient and also very economical. Excuse me for the blurry photo.
Painting Palette
Applying Egg Tempera Paint
Usually I start with the darker colors that will appear in the painting and layer colors, sometimes interweaving dark and light colors to give the appearance of texture.
The thin crystalline layers of egg with pigment in them create a beautiful transparent effect, so that colors that are in layers below can be seen through the upper layers of paint, so long as the pigments used are not too opaque to see through or there are not too many opaque layers above.
Light travels down through the layers, bouncing off them and coming back up to the eye from all the different layers. This creates a myriad of stunningly bright, vivid facets to the image and is very appealing.
Here’s a short slideshow of the stages involved in painting “Annecy Restaurant”.
Using Layers of Egg Tempera Paint To Create Textures and Colors
Typically I paint all the parts of the painting that need the same color at the same time so that I can be efficient with the paint. I build up the paint, layer by layer, mixing layers of different colors if I want to have a textured effect.
Below you can see this in detail. The following five photos show how the wall becomes progressively more textured by adding layer on layer.
#1 in sequence showing painting of wall in "Annecy Restaurant" Egg Tempera painting
#2 in sequence showing painting of wall in "Annecy Restaurant" Egg Tempera painting
#3 in sequence showing painting of wall in "Annecy Restaurant" Egg Tempera painting
#4 in sequence showing painting of wall in "Annecy Restaurant" Egg Tempera painting
This last photo is how the wall looked for the finished painting. The variations in the surface are not cracks and they provide a very realistic texture for a wall. As you can see, the darker colors that were placed in the layers below are visible through the upper layers.
There are even contours visible on this painting, which adds nicely to its effect. If you click on the images, they’ll appear larger. There you can see that it’s possible to vary the paint height, for example the yellow lights, by painting more layers over particular areas. You can add as many layers of paint as you like and, as long as each layer is thinly applied, it won’t crack.
Painting Sky And Water With Egg Tempera
Painting sky and water with egg tempera is shown in this article through the painting progress of two egg tempera paintings by Nat Wildish: “Purple Flowers” and “Geneva Lighthouse“.
Layering Egg Tempera Paint
Three egg tempera paintings by Nat Wildish (“Norton Down Church Window“, “Jura Butterfly“, and “Aguille du Midi, Chamonix“) are used in this article to demonstrate how to layer egg tempera paint to achieve the desired result.
How to Frame Egg Tempera Paintings on Paper Adhered to Glass
The great thing about egg tempera paintings on paper adhered to glass is that they can be framed in many ways, allowing each person to select what appeals to them. This subject is covered in detail in this DweezelJazz Art post.
Durability of Egg Tempera Paintings
Egg tempera paint sets to be very durable, and within a year of completion, paintings can be rubbed, wiped with a wet cloth, and pressed hard without damage to the surface. Further details are given in this post.
It’s great fun to paint with egg tempera!
I hope that you have found this information on egg tempera painting helpful. You’re welcome to look around the DweezelJazz Art Gallery to see more egg tempera paintings by Nat Wildish. And if you have any questions I’d be glad to hear from you, just drop me an email! Cheers,
