An Excellent Tempera Book

I've just completed my first read of Egg Tempera Painting by Koo Schadler.

A snippet from today's email to her:

"I particularly enjoy your open-minded approach. Perusing the web for information naturally brings up differences in technique and I like how you present what works for you as well as others approaches. Considering various supports, recipes, work styles, climate, etc, all seem to influence results. What I get from you is that each person needs to find what works best for them. Also really enjoy all the web and book references--tremendous resources."

She describes her spiral bound book as always a work in progress. New material not yet incorporated into the general text is added in the back. I think that for anyone getting started her clear instructions provide all the details needed to start from a wood panel and take one to a finished painting. Supports, grounds, pigments, techniques--all covered well.

On another note, Natural Pigments recently offered free shipping on orders over fifty dollars and I simply couldn't resist picking up a few pigments:

• Chromium Oxide Green
• Cobalt Zinc Blue
• Gold Ocher
• Luberon Red Ocher
• Natural Black Oxide
• Titanium Dioxide
• Yellow Ocher Dark

I also picked up a 2' x 4' sheet of 1/4" birch plywood primarily for practice work. It's really too thin for use as a proper support without bracing of some sort unless perhaps I work with small pieces.