Table of Contents

Lake Painting

Name: Mackenzie Fox

Date and Time: 

2021.06.03, 10:00 am

Location: Home Kitchen

Subject: Lake Painting

Before I began, I first scraped the pigment off the filter that it had been drying on for nearly two days. The pigment came off in a fairly large clump, though some small pieces flaked off and a fair amount remained on the filter itself. The large clump of pigment was a deep magenta in color, though the residue on the filter suggested that the color of the pigment when painted out would be lighter and pinker. The texture is somewhat difficult to describe; it was not particularly grainy or coarse, but it was also not yet extremely wet; perhaps the best term to describe it would be “dry paste.”

After scraping the pigment from the filter, I began to prepare the binders that would be used in the course of preparing the paints: egg yolk (tempera), egg white (glair), and gum arabic.

First, I separated the yolk and white of an egg using a water bottle (I squeezed it just enough to vacuum up the yolk but not the white and then deposited the yolk in a small prep bowl). After this, I transferred the white to a slightly larger bowl where I whisked it for about 5-6 minutes until it achieved “stiff peaks.” At this point, I set the bowl aside while I prepared the other binders to allow liquid to fall to the bottom of the bowl (this liquid being the glair).

Next, after its surface by passing it between my hands, I attempted to remove the skin of the yolk by pinching it; unfortunately this first attempt failed, and most of the skin fell into the bowl with the yolk. I tried again, using the same method (i.e., separating the white and yolk with a water bottle, and drying the yolk skin by passing it back and forth between my hands) and this time managed to remove the skin without any pieces falling into the yolk liquid.

Having prepared the yolk, I then proceeded to combine the gum arabic with water before setting it aside.

At this point I decided to begin using the binders to prepare paints, leaving the final step involved in preparing the binders — the transfer of the glair from the bowl with the foam — until i had used the yolk to prepare a paint with each of the three pigments: cochineal, yellow ochre, and azurite. (I was concerned that the yolk might start to dry out, and felt that giving the glair more time to separate from the foam couldn’t hurt.)

Before actually painting, however, I quickly drew a grid on a sheet of multimedia paper to use as a sample card as I had forgotten to do so before we began. This took about 2-3 minutes. After this, I took a small chunk of cochineal pigment about the size of a lima bean and placed it on a white plastic plate that I had chosen to use as a surface for muddling.

At this point, I began to add egg yolk in small increments using a dropper. I incorporated the egg yolk by first attempting to combine it with the chunk of pigment using a plastic scraper. After the yolk was no longer a separate puddle of liquid atop the pigment, I began to muddle the pigment using the candle holder pictured above with the intention of continuing until it reached something approaching the mayonnaise-like consistency that I believed a paint should have from earlier experiences with paint (mostly in arts-and-crafts classes in grade school, though I suppose the consistency of the kind of paint used when painting walls may also have given this impression). Muddling was made difficult by the fact that much of the pigment got caught in the slight indentation at the bottom of the candle holder that I was using as a muddler. As a result, after only about a minute or so of muddling, I decided to paint with what I had, which was still somewhat more paste-like than might have been desired.

As I was somewhat unhappy with how uneven the application of color had been, I decided to make another attempt after adding more moisture, which I hoped would create a thinner paint more likely to create an even color. Unfortunately, this just led to an even more washed-out color without creating a more even application. It could be that my inability to muddle very effectively played a role here, but I remain unsure what might have caused the uneven-ness of the cochineal (this remained a problem even with the other binders as will be seen below).

At this point, I felt there was little point in experimenting further with the cochineal for the time being, and decided to try one of the other pigments; I decided on yellow ochre. I first took out another clean plastic plate to use as a muddling surface (I kept the first plastic plate to re-use with cochineal and the other binders). After measuring out some of the yellow ochre onto the plate, I added some egg yolk and water before following the same procedure as I had with the cochineal, i.e., first mixing a bit with the scraper until at least basically incorporated before moving on to muddling with the candle holder. I found the ochre far easier to manipulate, as it quickly absorbed the moisture and took on a thick, mayonnaise-like texture, which, as I noted above, had been what I was looking for with the cochineal but never quite managed to achieve.

After achieving a satisfactory result with the ochre on my first try, I decided to move on to the azurite. I had run out of clean, white plastic plates at this point, but was able to find a transparent plastic plate and decided to use that. As we were given fairly little azurite given its cost, I poured out a fairly small amount before beginning to add egg yolk in the same manner as before (i.e., first adding yolk/a small quantity of water as desired, mixing initially using the scraper, and finally muddling with the candle holder. The azurite was noticeably coarser than the previous pigments had been, and when muddling it produced a loud grating sound not unlike the sound of soundpaper. Given some of the difficulties mentioned below, I found the azurite somewhat more difficult to work with than the ochre (see the captions below the images). The transparent plate used also made it very easy to see the scratches left by the azurite during the muddling process.

At this point, as I had painted out all three of the pigments using egg yolk, I decided to paint them all out again using the glair next. I first separated the glair from the foam by simply using my fingers to prevent the foam from pouring out the bowl as I transferred the glair to a small prep bowl. After this, I began the process of painting out again, starting with cochineal. Sadly, much as in the first attempt, my second attempt at painting out using the cochineal pigment also yielded a very uneven pink-ish color.

After this, I moved on and repeated the procedure with the yellow ochre; as before, I found the ochre a joy to work with, as it very quickly absorbed moisture and took on a mayonnaise-like consistency.

After painting out the ochre successfully it seemed, I quickly chose to move on to the azurite. Unfortunately I took few pictures of the mulling process  this time, but in short the results were very similar to my first attempt using the egg yolk. The first attempt to paint out resulted in a very coarse, uneven result. A second attempt after further mulling did yield less noticeable clumping, but still only produced a very uneven color. Finally, I decided to add more glair, and achieved a smoother, more even result, though as in the case of the first attempt there were noticeable air bubbles left behind.

Thus far, the only significant difference I had noticed between the glair and the egg yolk was the fast speed at which the yolk seemed to dry relative to the glair (though I also expected this to be the case, so perhaps this is not actually true in general). I had also expected there to be a yellowish tint to the paints prepared using yolk, which the azurite when combined with egg yolk seemed to have. However, the glair also had a yellowish tint, which, after discussing the phenomenon as a group during our meeting after we painted out our pigments, seems likely to have been the result of the malachite that was mixed in with the azurite, which has a greenish hue. Nonetheless the yolk may have given the azurite a somewhat deeper yellow tint, as, after drying, the egg-yolk/azurite combination does seem noticeably yellower.

After painting out the azurite with glair, I moved on to the gum arabic, beginning again with cochineal. The experience here was much the same, with uneven, clumpy color after painting out.

At this point I moved on to the yellow ochre which, once again, was very easy to work with and produced a very even color free from clumps after painting out.

Having completed the ochre, I then moved on to the azurite. The procedure was the same and the results in many respects similar, as it required 3 attempts to achieve a decent result in my opinion. Nonetheless, the azurite seemed to work best with the gum arabic, though the superior results produced by this combination could just as easily have something to do with a growing sense of how much mulling/moisture was necessary to produce a good result with azurite due to the earlier attempt.

In sum, the gum arabic does seem to have produced the best results (though it did just as poorly with the cochineal as the previous two binders had), but is not clear to me that this was necessarily due to its own attributes; it may just as easily have been the result of other factors such as the amount of liquid/moisture that I added when using the different pigments/binders. As far as the pigments themselves are concerned, the azurite and cochineal were somewhat difficult to work with (the cochineal especially, given how clumpy it was and how mediocre the results produced were), and required a fair amount of trial and error to get passable results with. The yellow ochre, on the other hand, was extremely easy to work with regardless of the binder use, and consistently produced a paint of precisely the mayonnaise-like consistency that I had expected of paint while also producing an even color. In short, it is difficult to draw general conclusions regarding the binders and/or pigments used given how limited my own knowledge of them and of painting/pigments more broadly is and given the wide disparities in how I actually prepared each pigment. I’d be very curious to know, however, how a renaissance painter might have viewed each of these pigments/binders!