Zen and the art of tempera medium

Magic potion ingredients

Why is adding a layer of egg-tempera medium over the under-painting not only a practical, but also a philosophical and spiritual experience?

... because, having taken to doing my underpaintings using Chroma Atelier interactive acrylic, to avoid the extended drying times of oil glazes in this benighted climate, (I have waxed unlyrical before about the fact that an oil glaze that took a couple of hours to dry when I was living under the Spanish sun now takes a couple of weeks in a more liberally humid mid-Wales), it is necessary to prepare the surface in a suitable way to get the final painting in oils to actually stick, without it embarrassingly parting company with the canvas at a sensitive stage of my career.

Egg-tempera medium is an emulsion, which is to say it contains both oil and water bound together precariously in a more or less stable mixture by the addition of a binder - in this case a beaten egg. I quickly brush on a quick even layer over the completed acrylic underpainting, to which it sticks nicely on account of being water based, and when it's dry it makes the perfect base on which to begin painting in oils, to which it sticks nicely on account of the varnish component, which contains resin and turpentine.

A practical measure then, for convenience's sake, but also a gateway from one realm to another. It marks a transition from the modern technological water-based world of working with acrylics to a realm of working deeply rooted in ancient traditions - the alchemical  discipline of oils and tempera.  I leave behind the modern and embrace the world of Leonardo and Michaelangelo.

Not only a gateway, but a transformational passage - the early stages of the painting are a technical and mechanical process, optically mixing glazes of primary colours masked by opaque white, carefully blalncing the textures of the different layers to create a 'monochrome' ground which is made, on closer inspection, of carefully controlled rainbow colours. At this stage I can still see distinctly and separately every constituent part of the process up to that point, like a complex technical drawing.  When the tempera medium is applied, however, it is a unifying force, binding all that has gone before into a single surface, a blank canvas that is no longer blank, ready for alchemical transformation.

From this point, anything can happen.

Recipe for egg-tempera medium (adapted from a recipe given by Ernst Fuchs):

1 egg

Dammar varnish (I use Kremer Pigmente no. 79300)

Refined linseed oil

De-ionised water

1. Break the egg into a ramekin and with the tines of a fork, remove the amniotic sac from around the yolk.
2. Put the egg into a small jar, screw on the lid and shake until the yolk and white are completely mixed.
3. Add an equal quantity of dammar varnish and a few drops of linseed oil.
4. Seal and mix again.
5. Double the volume with distilled/deionised water.
6. Mix for a last time.

The sealed jar will keep for up to 2 months in the regfrigerator. A slight smell of rotten eggs is nothing to worry about as the turpentine acts as a preservative. Discard if it gets too bad or if it curdles to the point where it can't be remixed to a smooth emulsion by vigorously shaking to jar.

Taking it to the next stage .... and the next ...

"Everything in the Garden was Beautiful" (work in progress) : Acrylics on canvas : 24" x 24"
Copyright © 2013 by Martin Herbert

So ... this is actually really three stages further on from the last posting. I meant to take another photo in between before I started applying colour to the background, but I forgot. Similar to the last (yellow) stage though, I glazed over the whole thing with 2 different blues (cerulean and ultramarine), both with quite a lot of mixing white, until I reached what I thought was a good balance of colours - and suddenly we have rainbows! The aim is to get an overall 'grisaille' effect - i.e. a grey monochrome underpainting, which is actually made up of lots of different colours that look grey from a distance ('optical' greys).  I then lifted up the brightest highlight areas with titanium (i.e. opaque) white.  Kind of like turning up the contrast in Photoshop, only it takes a whole day rather than 2 seconds!

Of course I added another layer of white flowers at this point. Can't have too many flowers ....

Lastly, I brushed over the background areas one by one with plain water, and floated some bright colours in over the flowers, using the acrylic like watercolour.  Just applied the hair-dryer and am now hoping the surface is tough enough for me to glaze over the background areas with some dark blue and green to finish them off (for the moment at least).

Onward ...!

Painting - first stage done. Work in progress.

"Everything in the Garden was Beautiful" (work in progress) : 24" x 24" : Acrylic on canvas : Copyright © 2013 by Martin Herbert

The first stage of painting complete. I sealed the surface of the drawing with a couple of coats of matt acrylic medium. (This was the point at which I didn't really know that the whole thing was going to work - it could have just dissolved the whole surface and I would have lost 2 weeks work!). Then I covered the whole thing with 2 successive transparent yellow glazes, one in lemon yellow and one in deep cadmium with a bit of mixing white. I blotted off some colour at each stage with a rag to get in a bit of texture and depth. Once that was all dry I washed a very thin veil of titanium white over everything. That makes the next stage highlights easier to feather and blend.

After preparing the surface as above I worked on reinforcing all the highlighted areas in titanium white, improving the '3D' modelling of the shapes and adding specular highlights. This process gets continued in the next stage, but hopefully I'm beginning to get a bit of depth appearing. At this stage the colour ranges from white through various shades of yellow and orange to the dark red / terracotta background which is still evident in some areas. That last is important - I don't want the red to get completely obscured since it's going to make an interesting violet (I hope!) when combined with the blue glaze that goes on next ...

Oh, and I added a few more flowers for luck.

All the way through here I'm using ordinary Windsor & Newton Finity & Galleria acrylics, mixed with Daler-Rowney System 3 glaze medium for the transparent colour glazes. I'll be getting on to the fancy new Atelier Interactive acrylics in the latter stages.

Today I'm concentrating on getting the next colour glazes onto the surface - that's where the magic happens, I hope! While coats are drying I'm off to the builder's merchant to pick up wood for the custom frame...