Painting an Ostrich Egg

I am ambivalent about commissions. In these pictures I have painted a requested scene on an ostrich egg. I wanted to try painting on a big ole egg, but to get this chance I had to paint a combine. That was my only guidance, but still, a combine. I love bread but I’m just not moved by the site of a combine.

The process was interesting. I was brought an ostrich egg, but it still had a big ole ostrich embryo inside it. How does one get the yoke and white out of the egg and still have something you can paint on? I used my dermal and ground a hole in the bottom of the shell just slightly larger than a drinking straw. As the grinding went on, and I did the grinding slowly to avoid cracking the egg, I noticed that the small of grinding the shell was similar to the smell you sometimes get when a dentist is drilling a tooth.

I inserted the straw and blew air into the shell. At first nothing happened but once the pressure built up the goo sprayed out in that space between the straw and the rim of the hole and I got ostrich embryo on my glasses and face. It took a while to make most of the goo gone.

Next I went through a process of filling the egg shell with water and draining that over and over again. I let that drip until it would drip no more and next I filled the shell with bleach. Then I used water to clear out the bleach.

I let it dry a day and next I plugged the hole with a tiny wad of paper towel and some acrylic modeling paste. I got that hole as flush as possible and used primer and primed the egg. I let that dry a couple of days. I ended up painting the whole scene today.