Painting on Location with Real Color Wheel

Hi: I'm exploring the medium of egg tempera -- every week is something new with me as far as painting, I want to do everything (!!!!) these painting are just yolk, water and pigment, on hardboard. The blueberry is 4" x 5" and the tomato is 5" x 6", with details added. The boards are prepared with hide glue, chalk and pigment.

My next venture into egg-dom will be to try organic eggs, I read they really do make a difference, then I will try some alum, and I need to find the best varnish for this, possibly damar for one and wax for another test.

Painted from life.

Thanks for looking. Rich

Hi Rich,

This is the tempera mix I ended up with, 1 whole egg, one half turp and damar and one half water, no alum.

Excellent darks all over both paintings. That's a great neutral shadow under that blueberry. You really understand how to use transparent primary colors well. Fresco and egg tempera show the mantle of the artist in my opinion.

You did a nice job glazing on colors, the tomato is impressive, using a secondary and it's opposite primary to make the darks.. then reversing it for the blueberry. Red and cyan are hard colors to maintain neutral with.

Two colors are missing in the blueberry.. blue and burnt umber. They not extra colors, brown is dark red. Dark all the way down to burnt umber.

Cyan gets dark by first changing to blue. Blue is dark cyan, as in the Iceland Spar crystal. The crystal polarizes to produce the two colors, pigments can't do this. We have to add this secondary blue color to the primary cyan. This blue hue darkens to black by adding burnt umber. The burnt umber hue is dark red. You could also use pure red to neutralize cyan, but you knew that.

So, to make a cyan colored object change to shadow colors on the object.. before adding the opposite red color to the cyan color to make black, first add blue to the cyan until it's all blue. Then add dark red (burnt umber) or pure red.

Don

Thanks Don for your kind comments and tips. I'll be trying the burnt umber solution for my blues next time. In my oil painting burnt umber is always something I lay down I mix it with Ult. blue for my darks, I should have known not to leave my old friend BU behind. :)

I sure appreciate the forums that you maintain here and your knowledge that you so readily share.

I wonder if you have seen this DVD:
Breaking Eggs; Making Paint

Rich

This is my latest painting, it is an Italian Plum and took way too long to paint, it is 3 1/4" x 6" another egg tempera.

Rich

Painting on Location with Real Color Wheel
http://realcolorwheel.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi Distempra, Tempra, egg, skim milk >> Egg, skim milk, casein painting, w/o black pigment >> Now I have to try everything - egg tempera http://realcolorwheel.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1155064758 Message started by RichL on Aug 8^th, 2006 at 7:19pm