Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until it was superseded, in the 1500s, by oil painting.  Egg tempera paintings are extremely durable, and don’t darken with age as oil paintings do.  Evidence of egg tempera’s long-term durability can be seen in ancient paintings we still have today.  It was used by ancient Egyptians on sarcophagi and portraits; it was used by the ancient Greeks; all the surviving panel paintings by Michelangelo were painted with egg tempera.

DweezelJazz Art Egg Tempera Gallery Page 1

A few days before Christmas I experimented with my egg tempera paintings to see how durable the method is when painted on paper, a process I’ve described in detail in How To Paint With Egg Tempera. I tested around 7-10 paintings, ranging in creation from several years to 6 months ago.

I found that for any painting over a year old it was possible, without damaging the painting, to:

• rub a dry cloth across the painting
• wipe the painting with a very heavily, dripping wet cloth

I wouldn’t recommend rubbing hard or wiping the painting with a very wet cloth in general, but it was a great way to find out if the paintings were durable, even if it was a somewhat risky test!

I also pushed my nail on the surface of the paintings and dragged it a centimeter or so, and to my amazement, no paint came off.  There was a small indentation on the painting where the nail had pressed hard into the surface, but it was otherwise untouched and the image was unblemished.

I discovered that it isn’t possible to do any of these things, without damaging it, to a painting that is less than six months old. Within six months of completion, it’s very easy to scratch or remove paint from the surface by rubbing it hard.

Luckily, it’s easy enough to fix scratches or blemishes if an accident occurs, by applying more paint, so that no damage or touch up is visible.

This turned out to be a very good thing one time when Jazzy, our african grey, decided she wanted to take a visit to the Maldives beach and finally (after many foiled attempts) managed to land on the painting when I wasn’t looking.

Jasmine took her job seriously as DweezelJazz Art mascot and she evaluated each painting.  She clearly had her favorites, because she would sometimes become obsessed with getting close to some of the paintings in particular, the Maldives beach being one of them! She skidded across the surface and created quite a bit of damage only a week after I had finished the painting. Fortunately, I was easily able to fix it and there are no traces of birdie tracks in the sand.

The length of time it takes for an egg tempera painting to become durable will vary depending on environmental conditions. The best approach is to allow a year for the painting to ‘cure’ and set into the durable, long-lived, bright images that egg tempera paintings are renowned for.

I received an email from Juliet, an egg tempera painter, asking a really good question about framing and I thought I’d answer it here.  Here’s the question:

“I’ve been using egg tempera for a little while now (for religious icons) and I’m really hooked on the medium.  I’ve been casting around for a suitable support for more secular pieces which is less laborious than preparing gesso boards, and your way of adhering paper to glass is really interesting.  Do you find you have to frame your glass-mounted pieces afterwards or can they be hung as they are?”

The great thing about egg tempera paintings on paper adhered to glass, is that it allows for many options when it comes to framing. If you’d like to find out how the paper is adhered to glass, and why, the process is described in “How To Paint With Egg Tempera“.  I’ve framed egg tempera paintings successfully in the following ways:

1. Hanging the glass just as it is with the painting on it (the glass used in this case is tempered glass, 4 mm thick).
2. Framing the painting in a standard frame, in the same manner as an oil painting is framed.

If the glass is tempered the painting can be hung directly on the wall just as it is. The “Maldives Palm” egg tempera painting is hanging on our living room wall. The painting is hung with a fixture attached directly to the glass just like mirrors are often hung.  There’s card backing on the back of the glass.  You can see the result in the photo below.

A traditional frame could be added around the glass in whatever sizing appeals.  The flexibility of how these paintings can be framed leaves options open for a person to find whatever appeals to them. As you can see with the “Aguille du Midi” painting, it’s now possible to add a backing and/or a conventional frame around the painting. 

I originally used the same glass that is used conventionally in picture frames; this glass isn’t tempered and is thinner than the tempered glass. I used wheat paste to glue the 300 g/m2 watercolor paper to both sides of the glass in order to strengthen it. As the paintings become larger in size, care does need to be taken because the glass does flex when it’s in larger sizes. However, they are robust and don’t bend if they’re not set down on uneven surfaces.
“Portrait of a Horse” is one of the paintings done on normal glass and it has paper glued on both sides of the glass.  It has been propped against the wall on top of a cupboard with no ill effect. It could be framed in a traditional frame right over the edges of the painting with a solid backing to give it support, like the “Purple Flowers” painting shown here:

Another demonstration of the robustness of the paper on normal glass with paper adhered to both sides of the glass is the painting of the “Fisherman’s Bastion“, Budapest, which you can see in the photo is sitting on an easel without a solid support behind it.  This painting is 14″ x 18″ (36 x 46 cm), which is fairly large. It has been on display long-term like this and it works just fine.

If you want to hang the glass just as it is, then it’s most definitely best to use tempered glass because this doesn’t flex even at larger sizes. I’ve put a lot of thought and experimentation into determining the best ways to frame the glass to ensure that the painting remains in perfect condition on a rigid surface.  If you have any questions or suggestions for other ways to frame the artwork, I’d love to hear from you.

Last week I painted a lotus flower.  I really liked its glow of golden yellow light that merges and fades into the brilliant pink petals.

The painting is 18″ x 9″ (54.5 x 22.5 cm).  Here it is (the original painting is slightly more red-pink purple, rather than the more blue-purple as it looks here; the colors also blend more smoothly in the painting, but I’m unable to faithfully reproduce red-tone colors digitally).  But this gives the idea:

Lotus Flower Egg Tempera Painting

There are many many views from the shores of Lac Leman. Town views, beach views, home-front views, country views… There’s no end to the variety of scenes that can be found along the lake.  It’s approximately 73 km (45 miles) long and 14 km (8 miles) wide.  It is the largest body of freshwater in continental Europe, and 60% of it belongs to Switzerland, with the rest belonging to France.

There are quite a number of beaches along Lac Leman.  There are sandy ones,

A Beach on Lac Leman, France

…and then there are more pebbly beaches.  You can see the Jet D’Eau in Geneva, in the distance:

Distant view of Jet D'Eau, Geneva, Switzerland

Many homes have gardens that end right at the waterfront.

Corsier, Lac Leman, Switzerland

Some of the homes are large and private, in beautiful spots.

Lac Leman, Switzerland

The towns along the lake often have many yachts and boats moored at the water’s edge.

Ouchy, Lac Leman, Switzerland

There are also many quiet coves with piers for docking the boats.

Cove at Bellerive, Lac Leman, Switzerland

It’s a great place to sit and watch the water.  Last week I painted an egg tempera painting (10″ x 18 “) of one such tranquil scene, “Rocky Shores of Lac Leman”, where the water seemed to laze under the rays of the sun.

Egg Tempera Painting "Rocky Shores of Lac Leman"

Last week I painted a scene of a set of trees that I’ve been intending to do for a couple of years now!  Finally it has been done.  Here it is (to see larger click on image).

These trees are in a National Trust site in England, near Bath, at a place called Stourhead.  I loved the look of the tree trunks close up, and how very alive they look, along with the ground around them.  They seem immense, powerful and yet very inviting and warm.

Here’s a larger view on the scenery at Stourhead:

Stourhead Park

Stourhead House overlooks the lake.  What a view!

View of Stourhead House Overlooking the Lake

Wheat almost ready to harvest

It has been a long time since the last post here on DweezelJazz Art blog.  There have been a combination of things that made this so.  What started it was that we lost our Internet connection for six weeks.  Our Internet Service Provider, who will remain nameless here, upgraded their service, but unfortunately they lost our connection altogether and never found it again!  So we switched providers.  In France it takes a long time for a new provider to set up the line. But we’ve been back online for a few weeks now and everything is working very nicely.

Green Summer Countryside

We’ve had a very unusual summer here – it has rained so much that everything has stayed green and it looks like the high Alps in summertime.  It’s absolutely beautiful.  The air has been cleaned every few days by another downpour and lots of wind, but we’ve also had a lot of bright, shiny sunshine.  It has been idyllic.

Corn Field

We’ve watched and heard the sparrows nesting in the eaves of our house.  The swallows and house martins, also living around here, are cleaning up all of the mosquitoes in the area – we haven’t been bitten once at home!  The swallows are fantastic to watch as they swoop gracefully back and forth, nearly colliding with the walls when they get close to the house.  The roosters and chickens in the large open field next to us have been announcing themselves loudly and are a real joy to watch as they bound and run across the tall grass, always busy.

Jet D'Eau Geneva Switzerland

It has also been an eventful summer, as a result of something that happened way back in February.  I went to the dentist to have a fixed orthodontic retainer glued back on. (Visits to the dentist have taken me frequently into Geneva and so I’ve witnessed summer in town too, as you can see in the photos.)  This simple goal turned out to be far more involved than I at first thought.  The dentist took one look at me, asked me all about any symptoms I experienced and then he announced that he thought he might be able to largely remove those symptoms:  migraines, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, extreme fatigue, difficulty breathing, lung discomfort, neck and back muscle cramps, lack of sleep, and so on.

And, to my utmost amazement, in addition to the removal of these symptoms, I found that I no longer had reactions to being around perfumes, cleaning products and other toxic chemicals I have hitherto found increasingly difficult to endure.  I didn’t rush out to put these things in my environment, but it was fabulous not to feel like someone had laid out kryptonite around me every time I went out somewhere.

Place du Bourg de Four, Old Town Geneva, Switzerland

I’ve lived with these difficulties all my life and had come to accept them as part of life, at least my life.  So it has been with amazement that I’ve discovered that these myriad symptoms are indeed entirely due to jaw misalignment.  I’ve learned a tremendous amount about this in the last months;  it hasn’t been easy and has taken a huge amount of thinking and observing on my part, all the while trying to learn fast enough so as not to fall back into the abyss of pain-ridden exhaustion.  Life rarely offers a magic bullet.  My situation isn’t totally resolved and I’m still trying to find out if there’s a long-term solution to correct the jaw alignment.

Parc des Bastions, Geneva, Switzerland

The great thing is that along the way, there have been times during the last months that I’ve been the most pain-free I’ve ever been – in fact, I didn’t know what it was like to be that pain-free – didn’t know what it was like to have energy, and long, deep nights of sleep.  Fantastic!  So I took advantage of it!

Looking up at back of Old Town Geneva from opposite the Parc des Bastions

In June I finished the Total Training Online Course on Adobe Dreamweaver, and within a couple of weeks I designed a completely new look for DweezelJazz Art site, with new galleries and descriptive content for the paintings.

Then I worked on a number of drawings for paintings in egg tempera, inked them…

Inked drawings ready to glue onto the tempered glass.

and then glued them onto tempered glass.

Drawings ready to be underpainted, and then prepped for painting with egg tempera.

As I was doing this, and also preparing some drawings for painting in watercolor, Tony came up with a brilliant idea: what about creating a book of paintings?  Well, I have wanted to do something of that kind for a long time, dreaming about it.  I decided to bite the bullet.  I chose the subject, in fact, if I survive the first book, I plan to do a series of them: each book dedicated to a town and area in the Pays de Gex, France / Geneva, Switzerland area.

I started with a plan to fill a 60-page book, large format.  So I created a storyboard for the entire book, including image sizes and placement.

Storyboard for the first book.

Then I started drawing and drawing and drawing.

A drawing for the book.

I’m including scenes in towns and in the countryside around them, so that the book will give the feel of the place as a whole.

This is what I call a "cow bus".

Quite often at the beginning of summer, you can see tractors hauling a trailer full of cows out to the fields, and again in fall taking them back to the warmth of the barns.  It almost seems like the cows are being transported to school or something, so I call it a ‘cow bus’.

I’ve completed 64 drawings and have 18 left to do.  Then, all I have to do is paint them! I’ll paint them probably using a combination of ink and watercolor.  And of course add text to accompany the paintings.

Sunflower

So, if you’ve managed to read this entire post and have reached this far: thank you!  Thank you for reading this blog, and if you’ve been a reader for some time, thank you for continuing to read DweezelJazz Art blog.  I don’t post as often as I used to because I’ve had to prioritize the precious commodity of time, but I do plan to continue posting and have some photos of pretty places and countryside ready for future posts.  I’m very happy if you find it interesting and fun.  Life is full of beautiful things, to cherish and enjoy, and I try to share a little of that here.

This sunflower, for example,  just wouldn’t pose correctly for the photo – I reckon it was a bit drunk out there in the fresh air – couldn’t focus on having it’s photo taken!  But it is beautiful, nonetheless.

‘River of Tulips’ started as a 16 x 10″ (41 x 25 cm) egg tempera painting. I spent many hours of labor over the details of the tulips. But I remained unhappy with the result. So I took a photograph of the painting and, last week, painted over it digitally until I arrived at a painting that now conveys the idea I originally had in mind.

Digital Painting of 'River of Tulips' by Nat Wildish

I could easily paint on the original egg tempera painting with egg tempera paint until I arrived at the result you see here. Maybe one day I will!

Here’s the original egg tempera painting of ‘River of Tulips’:

Original Egg Tempera Painting of 'River of Tulips' by Nat Wildish

I can see merits in both versions of the painting.  Which one do you like best, and why? I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Thanks.

"Portrait of a Horse" in egg tempera by Nat Wildish

Selling art seems, at first glance, to be a fairly easy thing to accomplish.  But there are loads of things to learn.  This last couple of weeks I’ve been concentrating on understanding how to make prints.

I’ll have two sources of artwork for prints: my egg tempera paintings and digital artwork that I paint on the computer.  The egg tempera paintings can either be scanned or photographed in order to create prints; I’ve chosen to photograph them.  The digital paintings need to be created, right from the start, at the correct size and resolution in order to print properly.  It doesn’t work to paint them on a ’small canvas’ document and then expect them to print larger.  And scaling the document below 75% or above 120% digitally doesn’t generally give good results.

This means that right up front, before I create the artwork, I need to decide what size prints to produce.  I’ve spent the last week reading four really good books on the process of printing, considering all the options, and how to process the digital files to be sure of color consistency and sharpness of the print.

I’ve been able to find out how to color-manage the whole process, from the camera, the monitor, right through to the printer, and how to either work with a print service provider, or to print them myself with a printer at home. I’ve found out what papers and inks to use, what calibration and profiling equipment is best, how to process Camera Raw digital files, and how to use Photoshop to implement the whole process.

Access to the online library Safari Books Online, created in 2001 by O’Reilly Media, Inc. and The Pearson Technology Group, has enabled me to thoroughly and quickly research the subject.  This service is fantastic.  For a monthly subscription of $42, it allows unlimited reading of all of their books and training videos, or for $22 they allow ten books per month.  They offer a great deal at several different subscription rates, click here for more details about the subscriptions.

There’s no obligation to continue the subscription beyond one month, and it can be canceled at any time, so long as it’s cancelled before the start of the next monthly billing cycle.  They have loads of really great informative books; buying each individual book would incur a very large expense.  There’s a good introduction to the service in a review written a year ago on developerlife.com – reviews.  This helped me to get a better understanding of how the service worked, and then I looked into the details on the Safari Books Online site itself before subscribing.

"Maldives Palm" in egg tempera by Nat Wildish

I usually take notes when I read textbooks or informative books.  This allows me to quickly access the information I find most helpful in a book, in a layout easy for me to quickly scan visually.  It means that, in the future, I don’t have to sift through the entire contents of a book to find the details that I want to use.  And while I’m taking notes, it allows me to process and understand what I’m reading at much greater depth.  I find it a very efficient and effective way to work. Doing things this way, I rarely need to keep a book once I’ve read it.

I love the idea of being able to access this information online without having to waste the resources it would take to have that book in print, delivered or bought from a store and then to not need it after reading it for a few days.  It’s a much more environmentally friendly way to go about things, and one that my way of working naturally accommodates.

The Safari Books Online has been vital in enabling me to access really good books on a subject that is otherwise extremely difficult to get a good grasp of.  And until I read all four books that I chose to read on the subject of printing, I really didn’t feel equipped to move forward with the process.  The Safari Books Online service also provides what they call ‘Rough Cuts’, in which authors provide the text of a book while they’re writing it.  One of the books I read, which was absolutely brilliant, was a Rough Cut for a book that isn’t due to be printed until July of this year, 2009.

These are the four books I would recommend on the process of taking a digital file from creation to print:

1. Inkjet Tips and Techniques An Essential Printing Resource for Photographers by Andrew Darlow
2. Mastering Digital Color: A Photographer’s and Artist’s Guide to Controlling Color by David Saffir
3. Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications by Claudia McCue (this is a ‘Rough Cut’, due to be published in July 2009)
4. CMYK 2.0: A Cooperative Workflow for Photographers, Designers, and Printers by Rick McCleary

Safari Books Online cover many topics and are constantly expanding their library.  Searching their library is a really good way to find excellent books on different subjects.  And at the bottom of each book description they also include Amazon.com customer reviews, which is a really excellent way to gauge the relevance of a book to your needs.

Next, I’m going to read a book specifically on Digital Painting, “Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting” by Bert Monroy; then I’ll read a couple of books about digital SLR cameras, and about the one we have in particular, so that I can competently take photos of the artwork.

After that, well… I’ll see if there’s anything else relevant to my art goals.

"Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest" egg tempera painting by Nat Wildish

I hope to have most of the research of this type finished within the next month.  And then I can really get to work on the art, which is, after all, the most enticing part.  I hope that sharing some of my process in researching and in particular the books I found on printing can be of help to you.  If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions I’d be very happy to hear them.

This is the final post in this series on how to paint with egg tempera, and here we’ll be looking at the painting progression of another three paintings in egg tempera.

Egg Tempera Painting of “Norton Down Church Window”

Below is a slide show movie showing the window being painted, click here to see it if it doesn’t appear in your rss feed or reader.

Below are a progression of still shots to show the top half of this painting in more detail.  To see larger, click on the image.

#1 in progress series of egg tempera painting "Norton Down Church Window"

First I put on the dark grey shades.

#2 in progress series of egg tempera painting "Norton Down Church Window"

Then I added lighter greys and started working on the rusty coloring.

#3 in progress series of egg tempera painting "Norton Down Church Window"

Then greens were added to the wall and the window.  As I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, I try to paint all the objects on the painting that require a given color all in the same session.  This promotes speed, but it also means that I minimise how often I have to create the same shade and consistency of color during another session.

#4 in progress series of egg tempera painting "Norton Down Church Window"

Lighter colors and highlights are added.

#5 in progress series of egg tempera painting "Norton Down Church Window"

And here’s the finished painting, well, the top half of it.

Egg Tempera Painting of “Jura Butterfly”

An example of a different subject is this painting of a butterfly shown in the slide movie below, click here to see it if it doesn’t appear in your rss feed or reader.

You can see how the different colors in the greenery are added layer by layer until the desired effect is arrived at.

Egg Tempera Painting of “Aguille du Midi, Chamonix”

Here’s  a completely different subject: the Aguille du Midi, Chamonix, the mountains that rub shoulders with Mont Blanc in France.

Stage 1 of painting "Aguille du Midi, Chamonix"

Below is a slide movie showing the progress of painting these mountains. This slide show is a little different in that it shows close-ups of the first third of the painting from beginning to completion in the first three slides, then the second three slides show the middle portion of the painting from beginning to completion. The last slide shows the completed painting in full, click here to see it if it doesn’t appear in your rss feed or reader.

If you’d like to see the complete finished painting in larger format, click on the image below.

Finished painting "Aguille du Midi, Chamonix"

Painting with egg tempera can be time-consuming because it does need to be applied thinly and it dries almost immediately after it’s applied. But it is possible to go fairly fast, if you move your paintbrush in quick repeated strokes to spread the paint to a wider area before it dries.

Another factor which influences the time required to produce a painting is how many layers are applied. A beautiful painting can be created with surprisingly few layers of egg tempera paint, so it’s a question of what effect is wanted. If time is taken to paint many layers, the payoff is that it’s like building a crystalline gem that reflects brilliant colors.

It’s a very rewarding, hardy and long-lasting medium – just think, every surviving panel painting by Michelangelo was painted in egg tempera. If you’re thinking of having a go at painting with egg tempera, I hope you have loads of fun and that these posts have been useful.

If you have any questions or comments, I’d be pleased to receive them.

Parts I and II showed how to prepare egg tempera paint and how to paint with it.  Here we’ll demonstrate the progress of two more paintings and show in detail how to paint sky and water with egg tempera.

Painting the “Purple Flowers”

The following slide movie shows the progress of painting “Purple Flowers”, ending with the finished painting.  This gives a good sense of how to approach the layering of colors and paint when using egg tempera.

In the slides above you can see how the layering of color on the flower stalks gives them depth and substance and how the petals are gradually built up from dark to light, with the darker color showing through the upper layers of paint, to give them a translucent look.

Painting sky can be a bit tricky, but I find it helpful to visualize it the following way. The sky without clouds is (or should be) a really deep blue. When there’s moisture or dust in the air (and possibly other things too!), these particles scatter light in all directions, throwing light back at the observer. This light coming back from the dust (and other) particles makes the sky look lighter blue.

Egg tempera kind of works in a similar way.  To create depth of color, we place down a few layers of deep, dark blue on the painting first. We can think of it as painting that deep blue that we know is behind all those dust particles in the air.

#1 in series demo of "Purple Flowers" egg tempera painting

Then, paint alternate layers of slightly opaque blue and darker blue, by adding a little white gouache to the blue paint to make the lighter blues. This is as though we’re adding our own particles in the air of the painting when we introduce the opaque paint. (Click on images to see in more detail.)

#2 in series demo of "Purple Flowers" egg tempera painting

Repeatedly add dark and light, and sometimes very light, blue layers of egg tempera paint.

#3 in series demo of "Purple Flowers" egg tempera painting

eventually it gives the same appearance of hazy depth on the painting as we perceive when we look at the sky.

The same process works well for painting the far hills to have that hazy look.

#4 in series demo of "Purple Flowers" egg tempera painting

This is really one of the stellar characteristics of egg tempera paint, it allows for the light to travel through the layers of paint in such a way that it can really create the illusion of depth in a painting.

#5 in series demo of "Purple Flowers" egg tempera painting

This last image shows the final version of the upper half of the “Purple Flowers” painting.

Painting the “Geneva Lighthouse”

Below is another slide show movie demonstrating the progress of the painting “Geneva Lighthouse”.  Here the same principles were applied to the sky.

In addition you can see how the Geneva lake water was painted.  First the darker hues, and then gradually the layers of colors of the water were added until the lighter colors of reflections from the water were finally added.  In some places some darker highlights were softly added to the upper layers to show dark patches on the water.

Stay tuned for the final post in this series on DweezelJazz Art blog, “How To Paint With Egg Tempera, Part IV”, to see the progress demos of an additional three egg tempera paintings.