Tempera - the way to paint

Egg tempera was a thick and fast-drying binder, which made it difficult for the painter to model the mold.
Means were used to stop drying, for example, honey, but this did not give good results, and therefore the work was facilitated only by proper layering of the paint.
Paint was applied in two ways: by so-called "scoring", that is, with dots, or with dashes.
At the right distance, the dashes, or dots, blended together and gave smooth transitions from tone to tone.
By such modeling, we distinguish tempera covered with varnish from the oil technique.
In paintings of smaller sizes, it was sometimes possible to achieve free tempera modeling without using dashes or dots.
According to Cennini, the painting process went as follows:
First the background was painted, the clothes, and finally the faces.
The body was painted over an underpainting of earthy green, slightly bleached, and pink tones (bleached cinnabar) were laid down so that the green underpainting shone through.
Painted from dark tones, gradually moving to light. At the very end, the so-called "blips" were laid down almost from white alone.
After painting the body, eyes, mouth and nostrils were painted.
Sometimes the tempera technique was combined with glue. A fine parchment glue was always used as glue.
In the north (Germany), vegetable glue (gum) was used. The glue binder was more fluid and it was easier to develop delicate forms with it. Often hair was painted on the glue binder. The more liquid glue allowed longer lines to be drawn.
Some dyes, such as blue, were always run on glue in tempera technique, as they changed color with the yolk.