Make Your Own Tempera Paint!

We love anything that we can make ourselves and art supplies are no exception. Making your own tempera paint is cheap and easy!  Win- win!

Part of our grammar curriculum involves doing picture studies periodically.  This has been a favourite with B because she loves looking at the different paintings, learning about the artists and learning more about their chosen medium.  It's a great opportunity for us to step outside of the curriculum and follow her interests.

This week we looked at a painting by Andrew Wyeth called "The Master Bedroom".

The book mentioned that he used tempera paint which was often made by combining powdered pigment with egg yolk or other binding agent (like glue, water, honey or milk).  Tempera paint was one of the primary methods of painting until oil paint entered the scene. It was used on some early Egyptian sarcophagi decorations  and many medieval cave paintings in India.

We decided to try making our own tempera paint.  We used watercolour paints as our pigment because that's what I had but I bet food colouring would work well too.  If you happen to have some kind of powdered pigment, use that!

Separate your egg yolks and place them into bowls.  

Add pigment.  

Mix and paint!  

When it dries it has a lovely glossy finish.  It really does make beautiful paintings!