Symonne de la Croix

I dont love it but it was a fantastic learning experience. Egg tempera is a hard medium to use, and period pigments add to the complexity. I dont like how muddy the faces look. It is difficult to blend or glaze really. Tends to damage the under layers. Perhaps I didnt wait long enough between coats. I should make some more shell gold to fix the areas where the leaf didnt stick. Not sure if I want to put more into it now though. Next time I might try egg tempera grosso. (Egg yolk and oil emulsion) still a period technique for panel painters I think. Will have to research it more. and I will keep trying to source a fattier egg from a duck or goose. Doing this really makes me appreciate the medieval scribes

                    Skin Fail with Egg Tempera                        by Symonne de la Croix  Egg tempera is hard!! Just saying 😊. I was trying to develop the skin tones and was going ok but I put too much of a watery mix on the babys face which damaged it. I tried to fix it but it kept getting worse. Then I noticed the tempera was coming off down to the rabbit skin glue gesso which surprised me. So I kept scrubbing and removed most of the paint on his face so  I will start again.  I wish I had of known that you can remove the tempera. I would have cleaned off the yucky scratchy looking terre-verte that I put down first. Its making it very hard to get smooth skin without it looking dirty. Oh well. Its about learning.

                  Background Experiment         Burnt sienna for the background. Started painting layers which looked unpleasant as the tempera is very transparent and the brush strokes were very obvious.  So I decided to flood the colour in. (Pooling a very fluid paint mix then pushing the surface of the paint to guide it along but never touching the gesso with my brush, if that makes sense.)  Uses a lot of paint but gives a more opaque look without the brush strokes.  Perhaps that would happen with multiple thin layers of the tempera anyway. I will have to experiment and find out.

                 The Ugly Stages.           by Symonne de la Croix  I used terraverte for the underpainting (I read thats what the old masters used). It was darker than I would have liked and because of the egg tempera fast drying time it looked scratchy.  I am thinking about using egg tempera grosso (egg and oil) as it is still a period technique and the added oil changes the drying time.  Well thats the theory, I have never used it before. Need to research the ratios.  I tried to lighten and soften the skin tones with lead white which produced a sort of smoky look then I mixed the lead to make a skin colour and tried limning (little strokes). Interesting technique but not what I am looking for. I enjoyed painting the glazes over the head scarf and clothes. My first time using real LAPIS LAZULI. Love it.

LEARNING MEDIEVAL TECHNIQUES  by Symonne de la Croix I am trying to teach myself how to paint with egg tempera and to water gild on medieval rabbit skin glue gessoed board with period pigments. I enjoyed the prep work of making the RSG gesso and the RSG bole. I enjoyed burnishing the bole to a shine with an agate tool. Even preparing the glair to put with the pure water for the water gilding technique was fun. What wasnt fun was the actual gilding. I cant seem to figure it out. Too much fluid and the gold leaf crinkled but not enough and it just wouldn't stick. Then I tried to burnish it smooth but I don't think I waited long enough so it took some of the bole off in places. (Could be not enough RSG in tge bole).  So I re applyed the bole and burnished it but the bole base was damaged. I thought I would fix the problem by applying a modern size, minium, thickly. Thinking it would self level and create a smooth surface again. It seemed to work until the next day w...

Thought I would post a little history. I used to be martial arts instructor (South Pacific Tae Kwon do, Rhee Tae Kwon do) and right into exercise and healthy lifestyle so it was devastating to me when I got diagnosed with a couple of auto immune diseases causing great pain followed by massive weight gain. This also affected my mental health greatly. My MH has been an ongoing issue since childhood following many things that children shouldn't have to deal with but that I am not going to talk about here. PTSD, depression, anxiety, bi-polor syndrome,aggrophobia etc. All the labels. With the pain and my worsening MH, I ended up in a very bad way. Culminating in basically not leaving my bedroom for 3yrs except for dr and hospital visits. Follows by an extended stay in an acute mental health ward getting 11 ECTs (electric shock therapy). Not fun. But to make it brief, I started to recover, found out that I am an artist and started a not for profit group (Demented Artists Group I...

Trying to get my head around this blogging stuff.  Not really sure what to write. Today I have been working on trying to save an art piece after my water gilding went wrong. Here is a link to one of the google documents that I wrote to record my medieval experiments It should be my process for making medieval gesso with rabbit skin glue. I hope it works. The first step that led up to my water gilding Fail Need to figure out how to put photos up from my phone. They are not showing up when I click on it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cVVYGO7MMVDIlx5SIVcOsYEJUAg4MuDbv8bCpeXEvOE/edit?usp=drivesdk

Trying to create this blog  Feeling not very smart.