Paint with an egg ✥ Exploring the ancient medium of egg tempera 

I’m glad you enjoyed it! If you try it for yourself, make sure to experiment with the pigment to binder ratio to find one that works: not enough binder, and your paint will dry out very brittle on the glass palette. You want it to form a film that will hold on itself as a nice flake when you clean up your palette with a razor blade or palette knife. Merry Christmas! ☺️

I'm glad it was helpful, thank you so much for your kind comment 😊 I wanted it to be approachable for someone who doesn't know the medium (as I assume most people don't), I hope it made you want to give it a try!

Vinegar is not necessary, however, it does keep the mold and help the egg medium last longer.

One should add a little vinegar to the tempera: it stops mould from forming. Pietro Annigoni, under whom I studied back in the 1960s, used dry white wine.

Thank you! It is often advised to add vinegar, I also heard that some icon painters use alcohol. I personaly didn't do it because I wanted to limit the variables, and also because I didn't keep my egg yolk for long enough to give it any chance to get moldy.

Yes I have one of these palette and I love it for watercolor and gouache! It's true that the wells would help it not drying out too fast, I haven't used it just because I feel I would make a mess transferring it from my glass palette where I mix to the ceramic one 😅 Did the iconographer also mix in the ceramic wells? Yes I don't know how my tap water performs, I have been using it later on to dilute my paint, but just in case I preferred using demineralized water for the pigment pastes, where there could be more waste in case of a problem. About eggs and fridge: I haven't read anything about the temperature the egg is kept at having an effect, but where eggs are kept depends on the country you live in. Some countries (US, Japan for example) wash the eggs before selling them, removing a protective layer that is on top of the shell and making them quicker to go bad: these eggs are sold refrigerated and must be kept refrigerated. Other countries (like France, it's actually illegal to wash eggs before selling them here in the EU) don't wash eggs, therefore making them last longer and selling them at room temperature, where they can be kept. I still put my eggs in the fridge out of habit. So where you keep your eggs is primarily about culture and food safety - Adam Ragusea has a great video about It (completely off topic but if you're curious here's the link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EP4YajqsJJ4.html) Some people add vinegar or alcohol to the binder to avoid or slow down bacteria proliferation - I didn't add anything, to avoid any reaction and keep it simple. So I kept my binder in the fridge and only took some out with an eyedropper, having most of it refrigerated at all times to keep it longer and avoid having more binder than necessary at room temperature for hours. It's probably not necessary to be that cautious, but that's how I did it! I have a video about the color charts coming 😉 It was supposed to be published this Wednesday but since I'm doing Vlogmas I postponed it.

@@Julie.Miette To answer your question: yes, the iconographer mixed in the wells. He first measured out the dry pigments, then added a whole (!) egg yolk to each well, and then mixed them using a small ceramic/porcelain pestle (very small sized, I think this too was an apothecary one).

Wow that's a LOT of egg 😳 I haven't seen or read about anyone using that much!

I mix on a glass palette. Occasionally I need to grind my paint. More so with modern manufactured pigments. Many times I'm mixing very small amounts, a single drop of egg and an equal amount of pigment.

It's true acrylic gouache seems to have the best of both! Have you been able to paint a transparent layer with it? Isn't it opaque too?

Yes, by transparent I mean as much as it can be diluted with water 😅@@Julie.Miette