The Aberdeen Bestiary is a 12th-century illustrated manuscript, now held at Aberdeen University, with hundreds of wonderful illustrations of animals, people, biblical events and more.
You can see the official website here.
In this study of one of the bestiary illustrations I experimented with the technique of egg tempera and the mission gilding of the background.
First of all, I reproduced with a light pencil the silhouettes of the fantastic animals of the scene I chose, on watercolor paper.
Then I colored the animals, with egg tempera, that is, mixing the pigments of the basic colors used presumably in the medieval period with egg yolk, according to the ancient technique.
Later I attempted gilding on paper with leaf gold (crazy gold) with the mission technique with egg white.
