Blackwood’s

I sent an email to Simon Blackwood (Who restores old paintings) asking if I could go and look around his studio and ask questions about different types of paint, as I'm wanting to gain a good amount of background knowledge on different painting techniques in medias before creating steps towards my final piece. 

I felt very out of my depth when I was speaking to Simon as he has such a vast amount of knowledge, I told him that one of my ideas was to paint on wood and that I wasn't too sure what paint would be best, he recommended that I look at an old method Egg Tempered.

Egg Tempered is where you use powdered colour pigment mixed with egg yolk as a binder, the benefits of this is that you can choose the consistency of your paint as well as the pigmentation. Working with this media does mean that it has a time limit, as the egg can go rancid and you have to work very quickly with that as it dries extremely fast.

Egg Tempered gives you a great amount of colour and is a really vibrant way of painting,   has the egg dries really fast its best applied with a fine brush and it has to be done in tiny little strokes as it can't be applied as a wash. 

Egg Tempered was traditionally used on thin pieces of wood as the egg yolk gave the paint a natural shine. He also talked about rabbitskin glue as a sealant for the wood.

I told him that I wanted to try and incorporate traditional methods,  and how we'd tried doing a painting with tones before adding the colour. I found that way of painting quite interesting as it helped me get the proportions right before making my actual painting,   it also took away the daunting feeling I get when you're faced with a blank canvas.

When I was there he showed me a painting that was done in the same style as we tried at college, by blocking in the different tones before applying the colour and details. I thought this painting was great, having a still life full flowers, exotic fruits, bird and a heirs, all just casually placed at the edge of a forest seem quite bizarre to me.  Most still life's I've seen so far have been of the classic fruit balls and everyday objects that are taken for granted. Most still life's are on the table, but this is in the woods. From looking at this painting, its given me a idea for my photography unit.