After workshopping how to use wood, egg tempera, and foil to create a masterpiece, there were many takeaways from this experience. To start off, it is incredible realizing the amount of work it takes to make this piece of work. For our small painting, it took about 3 hours, imagine how long it would have taken to do this style of art on an entire ceiling! On top of that, the paint needed was made entirely by hand mixing the powder pigment with egg yolk and grinding the particles until the consistency was smooth. Also, the foils used in our art pieces was fake gold, but the actual canvases used real gold. Since real gold was used, the artists were very careful to not waste any gold foil. In the workshop, we were taught how the fils wrestle cut to exact measurements needed so no foil was wasted. Overall, this experience opened my eyes to the how laborious this type of art is to create such wonderful masterpieces.
Swanson School of Engineering 