On Thu, 14 Nov 2019 05:11:28 -0800 (PST), whisky-dave
wrote:
On Thursday, 14 November 2019 10:30:17 UTC, pinnerite wrote:
It is mine. I painted it in around 1955. It is a portrait of The Queen.
It was never hung but eventually stored in our attic.
At the time I was painting quite a bit but could not afford a decent
surface. I recall that this was on a piece of corrugated cardboard from
the side of a Players' cigarette packing case. I used Dulux undercoat to
surface it I recall.
I think that I gravitated towards egg tempera because it meant that the
brushes could be cleaned with water.
I would now like to restore it and give it to one of my patriotic
daughters now living in abroad. I think she would be the one that would
most appreciate it.
So I retrieved it only to find that it had warped and that one 'streak'
of the paint had cracked revealing a bit of a mess. The dark background
has also faded on one side.
I plan to glue the whole thing onto plywood to keep it flat and then to
restore the paintwork. The problem is that egg tempera is not stocked
anywhere nearby but most shops sell acrylics.
Could I use acrylic for this?
Sorry to be so long-winded.
Can't you make or mix your own using eggs, I saw someone do this on the Repair shop, it does take a bit of skill obviously but if you;re an artist it shouldn;t be too difficult to get a reasonable result.
Perhaps you can look through some episodes to find similar restores.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08l581p
Failing that email or ask the repair shop to take it on.
Eggs-actly that. One of the things about egg tempera is making a
lasting pigment out of available resources so mixing it up is just a
matter of following an easy recipe using common things as people have
done for centuries. You've probably already got everything you need.
Don't throw the egg white away! If you are not going to use it to make
meringues or blend it into the icing for the Christmas cake, it will
make an eggs-elent varnish to lay over the tempera. That's the way
harpsichord soundboards were painted and then preserved. And lute
soundboards were simply coated with nothing more than a thin coat of
egg-white.
Nick