Exercise: Work like an Egyptian
- Abbie Vidler
- Jan 31
- 3 min read
For this exercise, I must tell a simple story using artistic elements of Egyptian imagery, it should view figures, horizontal bands and registers, ground lines a hierarchical arrangement for importance, all reflecting the structured and symbolic nature of Egyptian visual storytelling.
Research
I wanted to know as much as practical understanding of what goes into an Egyptian painting to ensure that I create a piece of illustration convincing enough to pass off as one.
Egyptian paintings "perspective" works as a border with the ground line being the closest and thigh highest being the furthest; incorporating into that, people who were higher in power would be represented larger than those who served them-- showing their power and authority over others; therefore, when thinking about my own illustration, I should consider who in the narrative would be most important. 1
Colour should also be considered when I think about how to approach my illustration, the colour palette is small but most colours have a meaning in itself.
Red Ochre - This colour was used to create male skin tone, and would also represent the sun, evil, power and "blood and life force".
Yellow Ochre - Represents female flesh and with a bit of gold yellow would also represent the sun and the flesh of Gods.
Malachite (Green) - Meaning eternal life, prosperity and resurrection-- in some cases its also known to represent regeneration and resurrection.
Blue - Otherwise known as Egyptian Blue, was known to represent the heavens, vegetation, youth, water and the River Nile.
Other colours included were white, black and silver (silver usually represented the Gods' bones). 2
Planning
Now that I have some grasp on Egyptian painting, I should decide what I want to create for the illustration.
Mind-map
Sketching/thumbnails/colour thumbnails
The topic I have chosen is a life drawing class, someone painting someone else. Based off of the colour that they used in the past, I wanted to integrate that into the illustration; I sketched some thumbnails and created some colour thumbnails to help combat the big illustration.
Final Illustration
This piece was created in watercolour and some of the line-work was done in brush pen, I tried my best to create the colour similar to how it was done all those years ago. I sketched out as much as I could always referring to traditional images of the Egyptian paintings, and I started to make the illustration rough looking with brown watercolour and brush splatters.
Evaluation
It was really fun to create in this style! I was a little disappointed with how it turned out, it wasn't really that exciting as those that were created years ago. The simple design does seem similar to the old paintings, but it isn't as extravagant; it was good with the slight less saturation in colour as it looks like it was aged.
I made sure to make some characters bigger because of their importance, so I made the still life models bigger and the artists a little bit smaller. I used different colours to correspond to their meanings, red for the male skin and yellow for the female skin and blue for vegetation (plants).
Second attempt
I wanted to do another one to see if I could do a better job, so I sketched away using a different thumbnail and instead of using watercolour I used charcoal pastels, etching away all the colours into the paper-- after that I used a piece of colour and rubbed in circles to create a soft look. After that, I used white paint to enhance the white that I had lost from the spread of colour, I feel like it helps it pop more.
Reflection
After redoing the illustration, originally I redid it just for fun, I much prefer the outcome of the 2nd illustration. It's a lot more softer and fun, very vibrant; maybe a bit more red in the 2nd illustration might improve the illustration. Although I feel like the 1st illustration was much more represented to the original paintings all those years ago.
1 A Serotta, J M Seibert & I Stünkel; Met Museum 'Paint Like An Egyptian', July 20, 2020. https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/paint-like-an-egyptian Accessed Jan 31, 2025.
2 U/A, Australian Museum 'The Painter in ancient Egypt', June 14, 2023. https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/international-collection/ancient-egyptian/the-painter-in-ancient-egypt/ Accessed Jan 31, 2025.
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