Over the next six weeks, for our Classical Conversations fine arts projects, we are studying great artists from the Renaissance and post-Renaissance period using the book Discovering Great Artists. I posted about this book briefly last year (here), and how the book teaches the styles, techniques, and works of many great artists, as well as including a related activity for each artist.
Today, we discussed Giotto (1266 - 1337), who before becoming an artist, was a shepherd in Italy. He made his paint by grinding minerals, berries, or even insects into fine powder and mixing the pigment with egg yolk and water. Egg tempera makes a thin, fast drying coat of bright color. The paint is very strong and long lasting.
Our related assignment was to explore Giotto's technique of painting with egg tempera by recreating a similar paint using crushed chalk and egg yolks. You can see my children's finished work, painted with their own egg tempera paint, pictured above.
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