Stlukesguild

I have seriously thought about exploring egg tempera myself as I quite like the manner of building up through hatching, and there is certainly a greater stability to egg tempera (it is far less fragile than pastel). Many artists I greatly admire were also masters of the medium:

Duccio:



Giotto:



Simone Martini:



Rogier van der Weyden (who employed egg tempera beneath oil glazes):



George Tooker:



Paul Cadmus:



and Andrew Wyeth:



Of course egg tempera does need a stable ground... cradled panel... and on the scale I like to work it could get quite heavy! Still... with the current use of pastels the framing is just as much of an issue.

After 5 or 6 hours the face was largely done. I elected to use green eyes to pick up on the green in the background and to act as a shocking contrast to the red/orange. I mellowed out the back wall at this time with a mixture of a creamy buttermilk hue with a bit of the green. This works far better and is far less shocking... but as you can see there will be touch-ups needed where I had to sand down the paint that was getting too thick:







I'll probably employ a very light green similar to the back wall as a means of creating interlocking zones of red/orange and light green:



The last hour and a half I spent here:



Sitting in front of the fan!

Here are a few wider views that give some notion of the scale of the work and the layout of my studio:



The yellow ladder is 9' tall and the studio ceiling is a bit over 12'.



Til' next time... thanks for looking!