Christine Allman
Visual Artist
Oil Glazes
As an painter I work in two main mediums,oil glazes for which I produce my own oil glazes and damar varnsh
and secondly egg tempera whch I also mix myself from dry pigments and egg yolk
A glaze is a thin transparent or semi-transparent layer on a painting which modifies the appearance of the underlying paint layer. Glazes can change the chroma, value, hue and texture of a surface. Glazes consist of a great amount of binding medium in relation to a very small amount of pigment. Drying time will depend on the amount and type of paint medium used in the glaze. The medium, base, or vehicle is the mixture to which the dry pigment is added. Different media can increase or decrease the rate at which oil paints dry.
Often, because a paint is too opaque, painters will add special media or a lot of medium to the paint to make them more transparent for the purposes of glazing. While these media are usually liquids, there are solid and semi-solid media used in the making of paints as well. For example, many classical oil painters have also been known to use ground glass and semi-solid resins to increase the translucency of their paint.
Egg Tempera
Having experience of the characteristics of oil glazing, I have found great similarities between the two processes but
also major differences. For me both mediums facilitate the basis of my work which is the subtleties of layering colour and
and conveying light within an image
Section close up of egg tempera, Florentisimo Est
Tempera (Italian: [ˈtɛmpera]), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of coloured pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium (usually a glutinous material such as egg yolk or some other size). Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first century AD still exist. Egg tempera was a primary method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by the invention of oil painting. A paint consisting of pigment and glue size commonly used in the United States as poster paint is also often referred to as "tempera paint," although the binders and sizes in this paint are different from traditional tempera paint.


Section close up of centre panel of the triptych Stella Maris