Durability of Egg Tempera Paintings

DweezelJazz — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:03:01 +0000

Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until it was superseded, in the 1500s, by oil painting.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.

An Introduction To Egg Tempera Painting

DweezelJazz — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:00:00 +0000

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. If you’d like to see more you can go to DweezelJazz Art.com.

DweezelJazz Art Blog » Michelangelo

Durability of Egg Tempera Paintings

An Introduction To Egg Tempera Painting