An Artist Life and Eggs

Just posting to let you know that I haven't forgotten my blog. The past few weeks following Annapolis have been full. Kids are playing soccer, one gets caught up in day to day activities and chores. When I am not painting or sketching, I am learning....I read books and magazines about art and technique. You are never too old to learn.

The last Philadelphia Sketch Club had Don Meyer giving us some basics on Egg Tempera...which sent me on a mission to do some research on the medium and of course I had to give it a try. This little painting isn't finished but it's my first egg tempera. (It's not the best photo either but it is still a work in progress..)It's 5x7, but I still spent an afternoon working on it. It's a slower painting process and sometimes it's relaxing to spend time on each brush stroke as opposed to the quicker process of getting it all down before something changes in the Plein Air process. It was love at first brush stroke. I could paint egg tempera all day.

What is egg tempera? Well, basically, you paint with an egg...or more specifically, the yolk. Why on earth would I want to do that or any artist for that matter? Well, egg tempera is the most permanent of all the mediums. There are egg tempera paintings that are much older than oils and they don't yellow....you paint with an egg so there are no ugly chemical by products such as oily or turpentine smelly rags. I used to paint with oils but as a mom was concerned with the solvents, so I switched to watercolor in the studio and pastels painted Plein Air.....egg tempera was exactly the medium I was looking for to take my painting to the next level in the studio. I always loved Andrew Wyeth's egg tempera and wistfully wished I could paint like him..now I can thanks to Don divulging the secrets and the not so difficulty of painting with egg tempera, I can paint with the same medium that Wyeth painted. What a thrill it is! I'm loving every minute.