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Egg Tempera is a painting medium and method, but painters sometimes have to put calligraphy and calligraphic ornaments in their pictures. If the painter uses exclusively acrylic paints, he can easily create fine lines for calligraphic work, even white lines against black, by watering down his paint. Even acrylics in tubes the consistency of tooth paste can be made to flow in a nib pen, while still thick enough to give an opaque line. Egg tempera gives the oil painter a way of making incredibly fine details, such as required for intricate lettering.
The most direct way to use egg tempera is to add water to egg yolk, about 1 part water and one part yolk, or more water as it pleases your. You then mix this with your pigment. The purists insist that you buy pure powdered pigments, mix them with water to form a thick paste, and then grind them on a piece of glass with a glass muller to break down aggregate particles. You then can use this paste with your egg yolk and water medium. Otherwise, you can use gouache, since it is very high in pigment, or watercolours from tubes. The professional egg tempera painters I consulted discourage (without adequate explanation) the use of watercolours. Some forums I consulted suggest that the gum arabic in water colours does not go well with the egg. I rather doubt this, since ancient painting manuals, such as Cennini, mention that painters would add the juice of figs and other vegetable materials to egg and these would actually improve the quality.
Egg tempera has a reputation for going bad very quickly, but you can counter this by adding a few drops of vinegar (or oil of clove, but I have no idea where to get this) to your medium.
Now, my next suggestion, which I have tried, will seem heterodox to the purists (my comments were not posted in a forum, which leads me to this opinion). I consulted with someone who runs a store in household paints. When you buy a can of paint, the store draws from vats of dye and adds these to the paint. What, I asked, is the composition of the dye. The dye for housepaint consists of pure pigment and glycerine. The dye can be added to either oil paint or water based latex paint. Such is the nature of glycerine. I purchased some of these dyes at 1.00 per squirt, which I stored in baby-food bottles. I did a few paintings which pleased me somewhat, although it seemed that the glycerine would come to the top of the painting and take a while to disappear. I then put some of these dyes in a muffin tray and added water. When the water evaporated, some of the glycerine was taken with the water, and I was left with a very thick paste in each tray. Now this paste was and is excellent.
An additional note on these hardware store colours. The law requires that non-toxic chemicals must be used in such paint. On the other hand, if you grind your own pigments, you might be working with dust of cadmium and lead. You have to be very careful. Also, at least some brands of paint dye use only permanent colours. Also, in some cases you can even be sure what the colours really are - you can buy tubes of dye at least for raw sienna, burnt sienna, yellow ochre and others.
Using egg tempera can be more like drawing than painting (if you want). Every line you lay down with your brush sets almost instantly, allowing you to cross-hatch as if you were drawing with a pencil. The most important consideration to the painter and calligrapher, is that egg tempera can be used in conjunction with oils, in three ways. First, you can do a clear concise painting in egg tempera and then paint over it in oil in order to take advantage of the smooth mixing of oil paints. Second, you can paint with egg tempera on top of dried oil. Third, you can paint with egg tempera into wet oil. The amazing thing is that the egg tempera, although it contains water, does not have any problem sticking to oil. This is because egg tempera is an emulsion, where a gum allows small drops of water to be held in suspension in water. Egg tempera on oil retains its crisp lines, making it ideal for working careful details into an oil painting. This was how the Dutch masters (Vermeer and others) were able to make small details in their oil paintings.
EGG/OIL EMULSIONS
Actually, I have worked with an egg-tempera/oil emulsion together with oils. The recipe I have is from Brigid Marlin, who has a web-site describing "mische technique" (mixed oil/egg-tempera technique). It is as follows.
EGG/OIL RECIPE # 1
Into a clean jar, crack a fresh egg. (I strain the egg through a small sieve, in order to strain out some of the solids). Add an equal amount of painting medium (half linseed oil, half damar varnish) then add water to the amount of both of these combined. Store in the refrigerator. It will keep for a year. Always shake well before using." Since egg white contains more water and less oil than egg-yolk, it can admit more additional oil. It may be my imagination, but this medium seems to get better with age, it drys more quickly now after six months. Another tip, don't dip your brush into your egg medium, but use a medicine dropper specifically for this purpose.
EGG/OIL RECIPE # 2
However, I have had success adding a small amount of linseed oil (a capful thinned with turpentine) to an egg yolk, mixing thoroughly, and then adding the water. I got the complete recipe from the website of Kama Pigments in Quebec.
EGG/OIL EMULSION
Despite all of her virtues, egg tempera dries very fast, doesn't allow much mixing of color and demands only rigid supports. This modified formula allows flexibility by gaining some of the qualities of oil paint.
Use 1 part Egg yolk, 1 part Linseed oil, 1 part Water, 1 part White Vinegar (or oil of cloves 10 drops).
DIRECTIONS: Separate the yolk from the white and drain in a little bowl. Drop by drop, mix the linseed oil vigorously into the yolk to obtain a good emulsification and add the water when done.
HOW TO USE IT: Pre-mix the amount of dry pigments necessary for your session with the binder and paint. This emulsion may be used over rigid or flexible supports with proper application of gesso. For multiple layers, use water as you solvent and, as you progress in coats, gradually reduce the amount of water used in order to respect the «fat over lean» rule. This emulsion may also be used to paint wet in wet in an fresh oil painting.
THE SURFACE
Egg tempera is ideally used on a rigid panel prepared with traditional gesso (rabbit skin glue, marble dust or talc or slaked plaster, and white coloration). Egg tempera does not seem to stick well on acrylic gesso, although you may counteract this (possibly) by painting your gessoed surface with egg tempera and then letting it set for a long, long time. Egg tempera and egg/oil emulsions work just fine on paper, but there may be problems later, since when egg tempera is completely dry and set, it is brittle. However, if you glue your masterpiece to a rigid surface before a year passes, I don't know why you should expect problems. An amazing property of egg/oil emulsions is that even if you paint on thin paper, the oil does not seem to penetrate and stain the paper - the protein gum in the egg somehow prevents this.
