eggy tomato magic

crack an egg and mix the yolk with some dirt (okay, technically pigment, but the same idea!) and what do you get? the medieval period's most popular type of paint-- egg tempera (*not! tempUra...which is a-whole-nother, japanese, yummy deep-fried, thing!) used extensively before the invention of oil paints in the renaissance, egg tempera is a magical mix of bright, glowing colors you can make in your own kitchen or buy ready-made (my favorite saturatedly-gorgeous color brand: sennelier, made in france & storefronts in paris).

today we mixed yolk with sky blue powder in an introductory workshop (click here to see # 16 in the descriptions) and then used our tubes of ready-made tempera to layer on color after color beginning with yellow, going to orangey-red, vibrant red, and on to so many more (see the colored dots on the sides of the painting to see the first 10 or so layers used in which order), and in the end, after it seemed like it looked like absolutely nothing but a mess, slowly, patiently, like the old masters gently layering strokes gingerly on the cheek of the madonna to build up her fleshtones on top of her green verdaccio underpainting, the tomato did, faithfully, appear. somewhat like a miracle, really.