painting a Tudor portrait
During the Middle Ages, egg was used as a binder for pigments. Minerals were ground to a fine powder (pigment) and mixed with egg to produce a painting medium. This egg tempera paint was ideal for painting on wooden panels. Both the white and the yolk could be used together or separately, depending on the finish one desired.
In this workshop the children studied some paintings of The Tudors from a range of books I managed to get from the library. Thick card was used for the base of their painting. Once they had sketched their chosen portrait, they created egg tempera paint using powder paints and gouache mixed with an egg yolk.
To make the paint: Place a couple of teaspoons of yolk with a teaspoon of water in a paint palette and add a small amount of powder paint then mix it with a paintbrush.
As you can imagine the fun bit was separating the yolk from the white and gently rolling the yolk on a paper towel to dry it. The children were pleased to see that the finished pictures had a lovely sheen to them.
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- cracking open the egg and sepatating the yolk from the white
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- painting a Tudor portrait
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- mixing powder paints to the egg yolk
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- drying off the egg yolk, being careful not to break it
