To make your own paint, crack an egg and separate the yolk from the whites without piercing the yolk. The best way to do this is to pour the egg back and forth between two halves of the cracked shell, allowing the whites to drain out. Once the yolk is separated, put it on a plate or in a bowl and pierce it. Then mix the yolk with an equal part of water and add to the paint (which has been premixed with a small amount of water) until the paint reaches the consistency of melted butter. The exact consistency will vary.

An inkwash over the sketch will secure the light and dark hues into place. To paint with egg tempera, use small strokes. Remember that you can't cover a large area with a single stroke since this kind of paint dries very quickly.

  Good trick: egg-oil emulsion

Tempera made with a single egg yolk is not as workable as an egg-oil emulsion. Adding a small amount of stand oil improves the paint's handling properties and increases resistance to cracking, allowing the paint to be applied thickly. Egg-oil emulsions can be used on flexible supports such as a canvas, heavy watercolor paper and thick bristol paper, if applied in thin layers. Thicker layers, like those used in gouache, are workable when built up slowly using many thin layers. Egg-oil emulsions produce a glossier finish than pure egg tempera and dry better. Like egg tempera, an egg-oil emulsion dries very rapidly and can be painted over almost immediately.

You can prepare your own egg-oil emulsions based on the following instructions. (Remember to take extreme caution when using dry pigments.) Egg yolk and linseed oil are combined to create an egg-oil emulsion with an oil paint consistency. Mix one teaspoon of oil with a single egg yolk. Too much oil slows down the drying process significantly and tends to leave a tacky surface. One part of this emulsion can then be mixed with one part of water-dampened pigments.

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