How to Make Egg Tempera Paint

We recently found the book Discovering Great Artists in the library and have big plans! The book highlights many of the great masters and includes art activities that reflect that particular artist’s style, etc.

The first activity we chose was a great hit!! We made Egg Tempera Paint similar to that used by Giotto di Bondone in the thirteenth and fourteenth century! Marvelous!

How to Make Egg Tempera Paint

*The process below is based on both the book and our own experience.

Materials:

chalk pastels

muffin tin

egg and water

measuring cup or bowl

spoon and whisk

old bowl and round rock or morter and pestle

paintbrush and paper

1. Choose bright colors from your chalk pastels

2. Break of small portions from each color.

3. Use the mortar and pestle (or old bowl and round rock) to grind the chalk pastels into a very fine powder. Be careful not to inhale the chalk dust.

4. Put the colored powders into the cups of the muffin tin.

5. Crack the egg and the yoke and separate from the white.

6. Mix the yolk with 2 teaspoons of water. Whip it with a fork until the mixture is frothy yellow. We put in a bit too much water…don’t!…it makes the paint much too runny and more difficult to mix the powder smoothly.

7. Spoon the egg water into the powdered chalk and mix with a paintbrush until you make a smooth runny paint. (Because we had a bit too much water our paint held the foam a bit too much…so we had bubbly paint…which was fine with her!)

8. Now get painting!!!

We had a lot of fun with this. My daughter seemed to really connect with the process and caught the magic of making materials to create with. We are really looking forward to much more fun creating together with activities from this book!