I still have an interest in the subject, even though admittedly I lack some of the talent, and as Easter was soon approaching, I fancied giving egg painting a try!
I had a set of watercolours already, as well as a new set of brushes. I had some eggs left over from last year (I'll come back to that in a second!) and I found a small glass pot that once... had a chocolate dessert, I believe? The pot itself is rather hefty so we got a nice dessert and free water pot.
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| Everything we need for some egg painting. |
About those year old eggs! If you live in or been to Finland in the Spring, you may already recognise the packaging from the first photo. If you live outside of Finland, I think you're going to love the next bit.
Around Easter time, there's a few new products in stores such as mämmi which... it reminds me of a liquid malt loaf without raisins, which you can eat with sugar or cream (or both). There's also Mignon eggs which are made by Fazer which is what I'm working with! It's kind of hard to describe Fazer as it's such a large company, but they own large restaurants and cafes across Finland as well as occupying a shelf space in pretty much every food store. They produce bread, pastries, licorice, and jelly sweets but they're maybe best known internationally for chocolate.
For their Mignon, Fazer puts an almond-hazelnut nougat inside an empty, real egg shell. The hole is then plugged with a sugar seal. They're then stamped (or rather stickered) and then boxed up and sent to stores. Originally a German recipe, Fazer bought it and production of the eggs began in Finland in 1895 making it one of their first products.
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| Fazer Mignon eggs showing the sugar seal. |
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| Inside the egg. |
In addition to being delicious they also have the benefit of being ready for painting, bypassing the need to boil them completely. They are also a little tougher than hard boiled eggs as there's no give to the solid chocolate when you're cracking the shell.
Out of the box of four, I ate one, reserved two for general Spring/Easter patterns and picked one for a special Quantum Break design. I wanted to attempt to recreate one of the spray paintings that you see in the game. One immediately came to mind; the CFR/Countermeasure painting from the side of the Bradbury Swimming Pool. It's one of my favourite designs but also pretty tricky to replicate. It's also the first time doing egg painting so it was a weird experiment.
As I was pretty new at this, I decided to do a pencil outline to begin with, especially as drawing a d12 is much easier said then done. The attempt photographed below is my fourth. It turns out that you can use an eraser on eggs! Thank God!
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| Initial sketch |
I mixed the watercolours to get a light grey colour closest to the CFR that I could manage. I feel like I did okay, the look changes quite a bit through out the painting but as a first step I'm pretty happy with it! One thing I should have done slightly earlier was the shading on the Countermeasure, I do that but a little later than I should.
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| Painting the CFR |
Once the grey paint dried, I used a smaller brush for the orange corner protectors. And then while I was waiting for the orange to dry, I used a pencil to draw the panel details using a screenshot as reference.
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| Adding detail and corners. |
Afterwards I went back to the grey, and used a darker shade for the right side of the CFR. The top right panel went a little weird but in person it doesn't look as bad. I then went to yellow for the first colour of the background.
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| Adding the first layer of the background. |
The original painting has several sections making up background, there's the yellow closest to the CFR, then the black surrounding it. In the foreground, the design also has red and yellow lights pouring from the device. As the watercolours are more pastel-y then the vivid spray paint in the original, it doesn't look identical but I like how it turned out.
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| Filling in the background and adding light emitting from the CFR. |
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| The egg painting in full. |
While I liked the CFR as a main focus, I drew a small, simple Monarch Solutions logo on the opposite side to cover the egg more and to provide a nice contrast.
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| The Monarch Solutions logo painted on the egg. |
I painted the other two eggs in random Spring colours. (The rainbow design being my favourite). The fourth one I ate because I will never refuse almond-hazelnut nougat. I tried an egg a few years ago and remember it being delicious but also very filling, and it was absolutely how I remembered it. Mignon eggs are perfect for when you really fancy something sweet... followed perhaps by a carrot.
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| All three painted eggs. |
Happy Easter!
