Can we make egg tempera paint?

[Crissy]

Hunter was reading about Domenico Ghirlandaio this morning and has a sudden interest in making his own tempera paint.
I don't know where we would find powdered pigment, or even whether the process is as easy as mixing pigment and egg yolk?

Any chance someone here has done this? Percytruffle, perhaps?

[nakitty]

you could cheat a little and buy the powdered tempera at the craft store and then mix it with eggs...

[Stacia]

We did something like this when we did our Leonardo da Vinci camp last summer.

The dc collected different things to try as pigments. Anything that you could grind into a powder would be worth trying. Some of of the things we tried included: various colors of dirt, various spices from the pantry (cinnamon, saffron, ...), and some ashes. Another thing we did was use some fresh parsley & pressed & ground the leaves to get a green liquid, which we then mixed w/ the egg yolk. Some things worked better than others, and it definitely helps if you are able to grind your items into a fine powder or liquid (otherwise you'll end up w/ little bits in your paint). Wonder if you could strain your paint? (We didn't try that.) Because we were going to end up w/ mostly earthy colors (browns, greens, yellows), I bought a bunch of sunflowers & used that as our 'model' for painting. The paint sure smelled lovely -- all those ground spices! LOL.

I think it's fun to have kids experiment w/ lots of different things, different textures, etc... so they can see that making paint is no easy task.

"Marguerite Makes a Book" has a neat section in it where it talks about her mixing pigments & making paints.

[percytruffle]

You can also run open scissors or a knife across a stick of chalk to make chalk dust and then mix that with the egg yolk. Use better quality chalk for richer colors or sidewalk chalk for a cheaper experiment. The paint you make will be fairly translucent and you can let one color dry and layer another over top of it. When the paint dries it has a nice shiny surface. It isn't easy to paint with though!

I have done this in a co-op setting with upper elementary kids. They thought it was great.

If I remember correctly, the book Discovering Great Artists has this as one of the activities.

[Adrianne]

You can also run open scissors or a knife across a stick of chalk to make chalk dust and then mix that with the egg yolk. Use better quality chalk for richer colors or sidewalk chalk for a cheaper experiment. The paint you make will be fairly translucent and you can let one color dry and layer another over top of it. When the paint dries it has a nice shiny surface. It isn't easy to paint with though!

I have done this in a co-op setting with upper elementary kids. They thought it was great.

If I remember correctly, the book Discovering Great Artists has this as one of the activities.


We did the activity in Discovering Great Artists. We crushed chalk, mixed it with a little bit of egg in an egg carton, and painted. My ds5 had a great time with it.

[percytruffle]

Crissy, there is also a great website your kids might really find interesting and inspirational:

Society of Tempera Painters (http://www.eggtempera.com/index.html)

I really had no idea these people were out there! All sorts of art forms are being practiced today that one would think were extinct. My ds just discovered silverpoint which is a form of drawing, from the Renaissance, using sterling silver wire in a stylus rather than a graphite pencil. There is just no end to the possibilities...:D

Let us know how it works out for your boys.

[Ravin]

I know some SCA people who are into making their own natural pigments.

It's something you have to be careful with; depending on the color, it can involve handling toxic/hazardous substances. People back then used all sorts of things you really don't want coming in contact with your skin, or breathing, etc.

It could be a fun research project, though. Not all colors are toxic. Some are made from reasonably harmless minerals and plant substances.

[christineg]

Crissy,
My uncle has worked quite a bit with egg tempera. I am enclosing the reply he gave me when I asked this question a few years ago. He generally uses water color or gouache instead of (or along with) powdered pigment. If your son is interested in experimenting more with the end result rather than the technique, I've found I can get similar results from water-mixable oils.

To begin with you carefully crack an egg and grab the yolk sac-wash the yolk sac off with warm water - hold that over a paper cup and pierce the sac letting only the yolk drip into the cup. Make sure that no egg whites get into the cup - if they do you can end up with a rancid smelling painting.
After you have the egg yolk in the cup start adding drops of warm water - easy does it - this is going to be trial and error - my guess is that you want about 1/3 water to yolk to begin with - as you are painting you will find that you have to periodically add more water as the mixture dehydrates.
The advantage of ET is that you can build layers of color - the key to doing this is the consistency of the ET - not enough water and it gets chunky and will affect your color and too much water and it will break down (melt)your previous layer. Once you have your ET prepared take a small potion of it and mix water color or gouache into the ET until you have the color you want and apply. You can also dry brush (just mix a little water with water color) over the ET for more detail. ET and dry brush are great for detail. The big draw back to ET is trying to get large areas of uniform color (like a blue
sky) for these areas I would wash in with regular water color. Because the yolk is yellow you will find that lighter colors will be affected by this - eg. if your are trying to mix a robins egg blue with ET it will end up having a slightly greenish hue. The solution to this is to add more pigment - a jar of pure white powdered pigment is key - you will need this to get real white (instead of a yellowish white) and in the case of robins egg blue you would mix the powdered white (and lots of it) with cerulean blue. If you really get into ET you can get a whole range of powdered pigments and supplement your colors with them. They can get real expensive but are worth it. One last thing about ET dogs, cats and mice have a real attraction to the egg yolk - I have had a number of paintings licked by dogs and chewed by mice so just make sure you protect your work from the animal population. ET will give you richer color that straight water color.

Hope that helps some!
Christine

[percytruffle]

It's something you have to be careful with; depending on the color, it can involve handling toxic/hazardous substances. People back then used all sorts of things you really don't want coming in contact with your skin, or breathing, etc.


Art has always had its share of toxicity, hence the reason for so many wonderful artists who ended up insane or with shortened lifespans.:001_huh:

[Patty Joanna]

Hi, Crissy; If you Google "orthodox icon paint receipe" you will have at least a good shot at finding something. I will tell you a little tidbit that I found interesting: you have to "skin" the yolk! Who knew? Orthodox icons are painted with egg tempera, primarily. Some use acrylic, but oil paints are not used. Anyway, maybe this will help. If you don't find an answer, let me know, and I can get you connected with an icon painter.

Kind regards, Patty

[percytruffle]

you have to "skin" the yolk! Who knew? Orthodox icons are painted with egg tempera, primarily.

The site I linked above tells how to do this and even has pics. It was pretty interesting! The things we homeschoolers learn. ;)

[Crissy]

Oh, wow. Thank you all for the links and information. I will be visiting the sites and making notes later tonight, and Hunter will be thrilled with art class tomorrow!

[Nakia]

We did the activity in Discovering Great Artists. We crushed chalk, mixed it with a little bit of egg in an egg carton, and painted. My ds5 had a great time with it.

We did this too! It was a lot of fun!

[sdWTMer]

To add to Patty's post, I did find this link (http://www.sacredikons.com/page3458.htm) where it shows how to skin the yolk! Interesting. Looks cool.