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Description
Egg Tempera
15 x 11"
1984

I sometimes make the same work in different media. Compare this with my watercolor "The Benevolent Place" www.deviantart.com/deviation/4… . This is the last egg tempera I've done. For this one I kept track of how long it took to paint. I counted only the time spent actually painting it. It was 155 hours before I stopped counting. This is the only copy I have. I assure you that the shadow on the right is not black (black shadows do not exist. All shadows have color and transparency.). Rather it's transparent in the original painting, showing the colors and texture of the wood porch. And the bird's beak in the original shows some color of yellow, a prick of red in its eye, and some blue reflected light in its body along with yellow-orange in its feet. Other than that (and that's a lot) the copy I have is not too bad. The color, lights and darks in the snow are just right, as is the cat.

An interesting comment on egg tempera by Andrew Wyeth:

"But you have to watch yourself so very carefully in tempera. It is a dangerous medium, because you can get to be a master technician with almost any subject in tempera and that's when you have to really watch out. It's a medium that can lead toward cold technical quality, so I think you have to fight this, and I find fighting it a very good thing. If I just stayed in my studio and meticulously worked panel after panel, it would become a bloody bore. In my technique I constantly fight the perfection that I believe I've obtained."

Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, A Conversation with Andrew Wyeth, by Thomas Hoving www.amazon.com/Two-Worlds-Andr…
If you want to learn the traditional technique of painting in egg tempera, this is the book I learned from:

The Practice of Tempera Painting by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr.
www.amazon.com/Practice-Temper…

Description
Egg Tempera
15 x 11"
1984

I sometimes make the same work in different media. Compare this with my watercolor "The Benevolent Place" www.deviantart.com/deviation/4… . This is the last egg tempera I've done. For this one I kept track of how long it took to paint. I counted only the time spent actually painting it. It was 155 hours before I stopped counting. This is the only copy I have. I assure you that the shadow on the right is not black (black shadows do not exist. All shadows have color and transparency.). Rather it's transparent in the original painting, showing the colors and texture of the wood porch. And the bird's beak in the original shows some color of yellow, a prick of red in its eye, and some blue reflected light in its body along with yellow-orange in its feet. Other than that (and that's a lot) the copy I have is not too bad. The color, lights and darks in the snow are just right, as is the cat.

An interesting comment on egg tempera by Andrew Wyeth:

"But you have to watch yourself so very carefully in tempera. It is a dangerous medium, because you can get to be a master technician with almost any subject in tempera and that's when you have to really watch out. It's a medium that can lead toward cold technical quality, so I think you have to fight this, and I find fighting it a very good thing. If I just stayed in my studio and meticulously worked panel after panel, it would become a bloody bore. In my technique I constantly fight the perfection that I believe I've obtained."

Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth, A Conversation with Andrew Wyeth, by Thomas Hoving www.amazon.com/Two-Worlds-Andr…
If you want to learn the traditional technique of painting in egg tempera, this is the book I learned from:

The Practice of Tempera Painting by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr.
www.amazon.com/Practice-Temper…