Make omelettes.  Or egg tempera.

Eggs have played many roles in the history of painting.  Egg white used as a medium, called glair (Scrabble ammo, that), was favored by icon painting.   Robert Gottsegen says that most easel painting prior to the rise of oil paint contains egg yolk.

Both whites and yolks make strong films and can be used apart from, inter-layered with, and mixed with oils.  Andrew Wyeth is perhaps the best known painter in tempera.

I decided to do a patch of foliage first in yolk tempera, then glazed in oil.  Here’s the tempera stage with cremanence white and calcium carbonate.

I’m after a sense of lightweight resilience that weeds so often display.  In terms of imagery that means transparent paint punctuated with opaque places.

In terms of realism, it means making the plants sit proud of the surface of the painting.  I’m hoping the egg will provide a more delicate relief than would a plain grisaille.

 

Getting a model up off a table top, especially if it’s a living thing, is fun.

It’s slightly less fun to watch the color fade and the leaves curl as I work.  Makes me grateful for classical training. It takes flexibility to learn what the Victorians meant by “paint in a broad manner” and their grandsons, my teachers by “don’t just paint the object, but paint the air around the object, too.”

I’ve got another bough stuck upside down in a Mason jar of water that may retain some color for tomorrow’s session, but I’m not counting on it.  I mixed up a local color as part of a string from shadow to highlight.  It mostly matched, so that’s what I’m going with tomorrow.

Art lets one test one’s logic by one’s senses.

From this:

To this:

Few things satisfy like making good culture, and propriety forbids crowing about them in public.

I have rented a studio in Asheville, NC’s River Arts District.  It’s in Riverview Station at 191 Lyman St., # 249.

Normally I push paint around for fun and profit.  For the past week, it feels like I’ve done it for the sake of character-building.

I expect to open for art classes by July 1 in basic drawing, ink drawing, oils and pastel.

My collaborators and I are forming an association to continue our work of mounting benefit art shows for non-profits.

Together, we are the Saints of Paint: John Mac Kah, our visionary; Christine Enochs, our internet publicist; Dana Irwin, who makes us look good; and me, the chief cook and bottle-washer.

Our first show produced under this name will benefit Appalachian Wildlife Refuge and will be held in early August at Addison Farms Vineyard, a beautiful site just northwest of Asheville in Buncombe County, North Carolina. The Refuge is raising funds for a new rescue facility for the treatment and release of injured wildlife.

Details on the show to come.

We were inspired (and advised, too!) by the Oak Group, a few landscape painters in California and SCAPE, a larger group which works in the same area.  Both groups have contributed mightily to the stewardship of the landscape they paint.

Like them, we aim to continue paying bills, making culture and doing good.

Today I’m in Edenton, painting to benefit The Cupola House, a 1758 landmark.  Wish us luck, and stop by.

Northeastern NC imagery:

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Almost there.

There’s a little too much imprimatura peeking through at lower left.  And a dozen other things.

One of my teachers, Rebecca Hawkinson, used to remind me, “every time you touch your canvas, you’re making a statement.”

That’s true whether one means to state anything or not; it holds true for statements good and bad alike, accurate, inaccurate, considered or careless.

What, then of all those lines that surround whole bodies or body parts in master drawings and are clearly not part of the figure at all?

They are questions, or better yet, statements reconsidered.