Table of Contents

Lake Painting

Name: Sophie Macomber

Date and Time: 

2021.June.02, 10:00pm

Location: Partner’s Kitchen

Subject: Glair making

        I saw that the instructions for making the glair said that we need to leave it overnight. I was at my partner’s house when I saw these instructions, and he was very insistent on beating the eggs for me. He was able to get them foamy very quickly. I saved the egg yolks and put them in a separate bowl, being sure that I removed the sacs from the bowl. I then drove these home and let them sit on the counter overnight.

Name: Sophie Macomber

Date and Time: 

2021.June.03, 09:00am

Location: Home Kitchen

Subject: Lake Painting

        I first scraped off my cochineal pigment from the coffee filter onto a paper plate with my plastic pallet knife.. The pigment was a very rich purple color. The dry pigment was very powdery while the pigments that were still damp kind of clumped together. I noticed that I didn’t have a lot of pigment on my plate.

        I then moved on to making my binding materials. I mixed the 10g gum arabic with 20 ml of water. I did this by using my dropper and squirting 2ml of water into a paper cup at a time. I mixed this with a chopstick and set it aside. I poured my egg yolk from the night before into a paper cup. I wonder if the yolk dried up more than it would have otherwise since it was prepared the night before.I then used my hands to hold back the whipped egg whites and poured the liquid that collected at the bottom into another paper cup.

        I used the top of a plastic carton of cottage cheese and a candle holder to mull my pigments. I put a little bit of the purple pigment onto my plastic surface and dropped a little bit of egg yolk on it. I then mixed this a little bit with my pallet knife. It was still really clumpy so I added a little bit of water and mixed it together. I then used the candle holder to go in circles on the pigment until it seemed incorporated. I didn’t have a ton of lake from this process, but I decided to paint it out. I found that it was really thick and kind of hard to work with. It was almost more like a paste than a paint, so it might have needed more water. It was also kind of still grainy. It was a very purple color.

        I then moved onto my yellow ochre. I poured more pigment onto my plate as I thought that it would help me get a better lake paint. I dropped some water and egg yolk onto the pigment and started to mull it. This was immediately more creamy than the cochineal, and it seemed like it was ready very quickly. This lake went on very thick and had a lot of covering power.

        I then did the same with the azurite. This was a lot more grainy than the ochre and I had a harder time incorporating it. The egg yolk also made the pigment more of a greenish gray than I had anticipated. I wasn’t really sure when it was done because I heard it was supposed to sing but it never did that. Naomi suggested that this could be because I was using a plastic surface for mulling and not a glass one. This actually painted out fairly well and had a good amount of covering power. Overall, I did like working with the tempera although it was pretty terrible with the cochineal pigment.

        I then moved on to the egg white binding medium. I poured out more of my cochineal pigment, about half of what I had left. I poured some egg white and mixed it together. I didn’t think that it would need any water so I mixed it briefly with my pallet knife and moved on to mulling. I did it more than I had for the egg yolk as I wanted it to be more incorporated. This painted out a lot more easily than the egg yolk had but it still didn’t have a lot of covering power. This dried in a very matte way, which was interesting.

        I then mixed the azurite and egg white until it was incorporated, and I did the same process for the egg white. I noticed when I painted it out that the lake seemed to clump higher and higher on my brush. The edges of my brush strokes had more paint than the middle and it was somewhat streaky.

        I moved on to the gum arabic. I poured the rest of my cochineal pigment onto my plastic plate and dropped some of the gum arabic on it. This actually incorporated really well and it was somewhat watery, but it painted very well. It still didn’t have as great covering power as the other pigments. I did the same to the azurite and mixed it together. This seemed bluer than the azurite had in the other binding mediums. This actually had a lot of covering power and was very fun to paint on. When it dried, it seemed almost more like sandpaper. The yellow ochre was also very easy to mull and paint out.

        Overall, I liked the gum arabic and the egg yolk the best.