Sunday, November 16, 2008

Tempera: old friends, new friends


I love illustrating with tempera, but is something I don't do since... sheeesss... almost 20 years now? at least not seriously.
Is a real pity.
But well, what you see on top of these lines, are my old temperas. They were almost all Pelikan, with some Talens here and there... However that needs clarifying. I had my own temperas, and I also had my father's, from when he worked in design and publicity. That means that this day my temperas are like 20-23 years old, but my fathers are at least 30-35 years old.
Oh man, that is a long time.
It hurts.

My surviving temperas (I did a cleaning some months ago) are almost ok, usable without problems, maybe some mold to be cleaned. However my father ones are solid like dinosaur bones. But, Tempera is like a phoenix, just the oposite. I mean, add some water, and enough 
patience and you might get enough pigment there to paint something.

However, as usual, the surviving colors are not the more useful, and I don't have time to apply CPR to some paleolithic paints, so I did a trip to my local art store to look for temperas.

Well, is sad, but Pelikan not longer produce Temperas, at least not the profesional kind, only the primary school type. And that is not what I need.
The only quality option I had is Talens, but here they don't handle the entire color line, but at least whoever is importing them, have a good brain and I found all the basic colors.


I bought the 16ml/0.5 fl.oz. (small bottles) presentation of the 10 colors I found. Well, I actually found also a brown sienna, but mix browns is not a complicated science.

I remember the feeling that painting with temperas was like painting with cream, I will keep you posted to see what changed after almost half my life.

3 comments:

Mostrok said...

jejjejej... desempolvano las temperas? interesante... algo especifico en mente?

Dodo said...

For now I'm doing the label for the orange marmalade... Is going well, I should post an WIP pic maybe tomorrow.

But I was right: I do enjoy working with temperas!

Patricia Villanueva said...

temperasssss... de Pelikan MAGENTA!!!!!!!!
i still have it!