Hyperrealism with Tom Mulliner

Day 4 — Animal Glue and True Gesso: Collagen, Chalk, and the Perfect Tempera Ground The Chemistry of Binding Agents • Masterclass Day 4 Yesterday’s encaustic lesson was about a paint film that answers to heat. Today’s binder is quieter but just as important: animal glue. It is the invisible protein network beneath many historic panel paintings, the material that sizes wood, binds chalk or gypsum into true gesso, and creates the smooth white ground that made egg tempera’s precision possible. If egg yolk is the paint’s disciplined hand, animal glue gesso is the prepared stage on which that hand can perform. True gesso is a protein-bound mineral ground Animal glue binds chalk or gypsum into a sandable, absorbent surface for tempera and gilding. wood panel glue size coarse gesso layers fine polished gesso paint and gilding Original infographic: tr...

Encaustic: Wax, Heat, Resin, and the Paint Film That Never Truly Dries Binding Agents Masterclass Day 3 • The Chemistry of Binding Agents: From Egg Tempera and Linseed Oil to Modern Acrylic Polymers Egg tempera is a binder of discipline: thin strokes, dry surfaces, and patient optical building. Encaustic is its hot-blooded cousin. It asks the painter to think with heat. Pigment is not suspended in drying oil or egg yolk, but in wax: a thermoplastic material that becomes workable when warm and solidifies as it cools. That single difference changes everything: handling, equipment, studio safety, surface, texture, repair, and long-term vulnerability. Portrait of the Boy Eutyches, A.D. 100-150, encaustic on wood. Public-domain image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 18.9.2. 1. What Encaustic Is, Chemically In encaustic painting, coloured pigment is held in wax. The Metropolitan Museum of Art explains that for the Roman Egyptian mummy portraits, “enc...

Day 2 — Egg Tempera: The Lipoprotein Emulsion That Painted the Renaissance The Chemistry of Binding Agents — Masterclass Day 1 of 21 Before linseed oil swept the studios of Northern Europe in the 15th century, the panel paintings of Italy were almost universally bound with one improbable material: chicken egg yolk . From Duccio's altarpieces in Siena to Botticelli's mythologies in Florence, the glowing surfaces of late-medieval and early-Renaissance painting are the chemistry of a single emulsified protein-and-lipid system at work. This is the story of the binder that built the Western painting tradition — what it is, why it works, who used it, and how to handle it yourself. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus , c. 1485. Tempera on canvas, Uffizi, Florence. One of the largest surviving egg-tempera works on canvas. Image: Wikimedia Commons / Uffizi Galleries (public domain). 1. What is egg tempera, chemically? An egg yolk is not just "fat" — it is a natu...

The Chemistry of Binding Agents, introduction. What a Binder Actually Does: Adhesion, Film Formation, Pigment Wetting, and Why Paints Behave Differently Course note: This is Day 0 of an intensive daily course of at least 14 days. The planned curriculum is 30 days so the subject can be treated properly: chemistry, history, artist practice, conservation, and hands-on painting decisions. A paint is not simply colour. It is a designed material: pigment particles plus a binder, usually with water, oil, solvent, surfactants, additives, or fillers depending on the system. The National Gallery defines a binder, or medium, as the material that holds coloured pigments together to form paint; in its collections this is often drying oil, but may also be egg yolk or animal glue. That single role, holding pigment together, controls flow, gloss, opacity, drying rate, layering, adhesion, cracking risk, and long-term ageing. Original diagram: pigment particles in three different binder...

The Art of the Intimate Scale Chapter 12: Contemporary Miniature Painting The 21st Century, Global Scene & The Future of the Form Chapter 12 of 12 100% Contemporary miniature painting is more alive, more diverse, and more globally distributed than at any point in its history. Understanding the present state of the form — its practitioners, its debates, its institutions, and its future — is the final requirement for genuine expertise. The Contemporary Global Scene The portrait miniature today is practised on every continent. The major centres of activity — Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, and increasingly India and parts of Southeast Asia — each have their own institutional structures, exhibitions, and aesthetic traditions. The RMS remains the most historically significant institution, but it exists within a genuinely global community. International competitions — including the prestigious Miniature Art Society of Florida and the Hilliard Society exhibitions — have cre...