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Author: Craig_Houghton, Contributing Editor
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| Note: This is an experimental technique, and I can't vouch for the archival stability or the results. That being said, this seems pretty safe.
Egg Tempera using Pastels!! What? Why? How? This might not be the next best thing since chocolate and peanut-butter, but it's pretty neat. If you've ever tried egg tempera you know that it dries unbeatably fast, allows for incredibly luminous results, and has just the right semi-opaque character that lies somewhere in between watercolors and gouache. And, if you're a student (or otherwise penniless) then you've probably noticed how tough it is to acquire a good mix of pigments to work with without draining your wallet. Pigment in bulk is relatively cheap, and egg tempera artists get off easy in this regard, but the startup cost can be prohibitive. You can use watercolor paint instead of dried pigment, but I found that didn't have the same semi-opaque quality or texture. There are drawbacks to using pastels with egg medium, but there are some serious advantages too. First off, for those who are not familiar with egg tempera, here's a great link: The Society of Painters in Tempera Basically though, you crack an egg and roll the egg yolk around on a paper towel till you're just holding the unbroken (hopefully) yolk sack, then you slice open the yolk sack and pour the yolk into a cup, add a bit of water (about a teaspoon), stir, and combine that with well ground powdered pigments to form a paste that you can paint with directly or water down for a lighter transparent effect (as much as you like since the only important ratio is egg mixture to pigment) useful for glazes and such. It dries fast -- I mean fast! It dries so fast that you can build it up in little crosshatches or glaze over and over in a single session. You can paint on canvas or paper or lots of things. However, over acrylic gesso is supposedly a no-no (use the real stuff), and, personally, I've had it crack right off an acrylic-gesso primed canvas once. When dry, egg tempera looks incredible with a really attractive matte finish -- it's even water-resistant. I've read that it's waterproof once truly chemically 'dry', but other reports have since contradicted that. Now, since pastels are usually just pigment along with some clay or whiting, some fungicide or something similar, and a binder, there's not a whole lot of difference between finely ground pastel dust and dried pigments out of the jar. Especially with the better pastels, one is really just handling pigment locked together with some binder such as gum tragacanth. I doubt gum tragacanth reacts badly with egg yolk emulsion, but I'm unsure (it'll probably just help bind since tragacanth dries like a glue). There's also the mold repelling agent, but once again, yolk is sticky stuff, and I doubt the chemicals are going to do much beyond protecting the tempera work from mold. |
| Here's what I did this evening. I drained a yolk sack into a paper cup, added a teaspoon of water, and mixed lightly. Then, I selected a handful of pastels, and I rubbed pastel dust off the side using a flat toothpick (ideally, use a knife and scrape downward, lightly) directly into the holes of a circular recessed palette. Then I mixed equal parts of the egg medium solution with the dust and stirred to a thin paste (making sure to break (as I stirred) any not-so-fine chunks of pigment).
That's it. From there on I worked exactly as one would with egg tempera. The only difference at this point was that when I needed a new color (although I generally didn't since one can mix colors beautifully) I just reached for a pastel stick and flaked off some pigment. |
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| This isn't pastelling.. it's painting, but it's one heck of a use for pastels. |
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