Tempera V: bont & blauw & borrellen ... (or, in other words: fur & blue & cocktails)

Well alrighty then, school's started up again. So this week's lesson was about painting...fur. We're still working with egg tempera. We had a variety of fake fur bits and the manky-looking stuffed squirrel that I've decided to name Hieronymus. A couple of my classmates used him as their model, and I just adore their excellent renderings of his...specialness. Here's a picture of him:

(he is rather cute, in a special way, I think!!!)

It was time to stock up our supplies of pigment dispersions (pastes), so several kind classmates made up some new batches -- the ultramarine was so pretty in the bright January sun, I had to take a picture of it.

After hours of focusing on fur, we let things get a bit blurry at our New Year's cocktail party. Long live the sprezzatura!

Finally, one of my classmates asked that I post all of our studies online, so here they are, with a couple of shots of the fur models/samples in between it all as well...

Tempera IV - working with a live model

This is the first time I've ever painted a live model with tempera, and the method we're using has about half a dozen steps, in two phases. Complex! Here are some photos of our work in progress.

Hester working on her underpainting

My underpainting

My tablemate Els' work, next to mine

Brieke at the easel

Luuk demonstrating the 'final touches' on Annemie's painting

Tempera, part III - alla prima

In this lesson we worked on generating a couple of spheres (one with and one without white added) using a technique in which the paint was worked around a bit while still wet. I had pretty good success with this and enjoyed experimenting with it. After that we started learning how to represent skin using our own hands as a subject.

Anita working on her hand

My alla prima spheres (still wet) and my COFFEE (the brown motor, mmmmm)

Two nice little spheres (left no white, right using white) and an underpainting of my hand

Step two, applying the protoplasmos on my hand sketch

Steven showing us...his nice apron? :-)

Tempera, part II - folds in fabrics

We're working out several kinds of "classic" exercises lately. These photos below were from our work on studies of folds in fabrics (red velvet, in this case) and they range from mixing the pigments up to a couple of finished versions by my classmates.

This is my favorite red: toluidine red. It doesn't play well with water (above) but once it starts to get along, it begins to manifest a golden sheen -- like alchemical magic (below).

Cochineal -- first a pale pink but, after Hester added water, it became a fiery red!

The folds in the velvet cloth from my angle

Anita's work

Brieke at work

My work (yes, it did look like a pile of brains at that point!)

Final finished products by Hester and Annemie

Turner Prize 2009

Went to an artist using some of the old materials and techniques we are using: size (glue) and gold leaf. Check out more info here in Dutch or English.

Egg tempera

We're a couple of lessons into the egg tempera material. I really like this paint, and am happy to work with it again. Posted below are some shots of making up the paint and then some of our first assignments in progress. In addition to getting acquainted with the paint, we are also working on our brush techniques, working in particular with riggers and trying out different ways of modeling. I'm not really skilled with wider brushes yet (practice, practice!), but using a relatively fine one seems to be working pretty well.

(I like Mir's expression in those two pictures above as she watches Luuk wrangle that yolk! [you can click on them to enlarge the photos])

(The aftermath of mixing!)

(Creating different tone values using two colors)

(A next step: working on another color - all photos above are from 18 November)

('Jet is working on our assignment last week: exploring optical properties of tempera; Luuk's keeping my spot warm for me while I'm taking pics :-). This picture is from 25 November.)

Distemper paint assignment

Here are some photos of the first experiments with distemper paint -- pigments mixed with a protein-based glue (gelatin and water). Our support was a linen canvas treated with a gelatin size before painting. The assignment was to allow the linen to play a major role in the painting. It was pretty challenging to keep as much of the support, which was quite coarsely textured, as open as possible.

(study on paper, glue size paint)


(transferring study to linen)


(work in progress)


(final version)

More miniature work

Here are some pictures taken during the last lesson on miniature painting. I'm not a big fan of miniature painting (yet), but I'm open to that happening at some point in the future. I still have to finish up this exercise, I plan on getting around to it in the next week or so.

I did recently acquire a small batch of vegetable parchment (enough big sheets to bind into a decent-sized book), and my favorite bookbinder has promised to make me a little blank manuscript so I can practice this technique some more on my own. That might be more inspiring than copying this page (from the manuscript of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves) featuring St. Agatha holding her breast in a pair of tongs (ow! poor thing!). We weren't required to be faithful to the copy, so I changed mine, adding strange hieroglyphs instead of gothic text and a sun instead of a boob. Some of my classmates were really inspired by these lessons and did a great job on their pages, I've put some of their work in progress here below (photos are from 11 November). A good number of them have finished this project and their results were really interesting!

(this last one in progress is mine)