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.
