Painted Birds on wood with Egg Tempera pigment paints

Here it is. The one painting which has kindled a very strong desire in me to paint more.

There was a tiny photograph of a painted cabinet in a home decor magazine, with beautiful birds painted all over it, and an antique finish to the wood. I absolutely loved it and wanted to paint the same type of birds on a piece of wood.

So my dear art teacher Mahi, encouraged me to draw the design on tracing paper & then have a go painting it. Under her direction, this is what I managed to create and I have to say I was tickled pink with the results - that is comming from me who could hardly draw or paint a thing.

Egg Tempera recipe for pigment paint.

Here is the simple recipe I used for my egg tempera paintings you see posted thus far, and also for the following posting titled "Bird Song".

I separated the yolk from a fresh chicken's egg, and placed it on the corner of a paper towel. I held the yolk in the paper towel over a clean glass and pierced it with the point of a sharp knife, allowing the yolk to flow into the glass.

I then mixed into the yolk, one teaspoon of white vinegar and one teaspoon of filtered water. Mixed it well, and transferred it to a small plastic bottle with a nozzle on the end.

To mix the pigment paints with the egg yolk, I simply added a small quantity of each powdered pigment to my palette and then several drops of egg yolk mixture and mixed with a cheap mixing brush until I had a fluid paint mixture.

The paint is fluid and a dream to work with. Obviously the technique you use with egg tempera will be quite different to the techniques you use with acrylics etc.
It is more of a layering , flooding and shading process. One which I have grown to love. It dries quite quickly allowing you to build your painting in layers in a short time.

My first pieces are decorative, from which I plan to expand to painted furniture in the future- I still need to research and test the best finishes for egg tempera on painted furniture.

Painted Driftwood 2

Ok, here is the second piece of driftwood painted with a blue latex based paint for the background and egg tempera with pigment paints for the flowers and leaves.

Driftwood Spetses-First Post

Wandering along the pebbled beaches of Spetses during Autumn, I found some beautiful driftwood washed ashore. This inspired me to paint something a little different so I took it along to my art class, (this was last year).

Here is the first piece. Simply, wiped and gently sanded down. I painted directly onto the wood-no preparation, using pigment paints in an egg tempera base.

My art teacher helped me make the roses look more like roses and in the end I was satisfied with a cottage-look to my piece of wood.

Next post will be the second piece of driftwood, and later on my egg tempera recipe for pigment paint.