Tempera paint Is the painting medium of choice for elementary art teachers, partly due to its fluid, liquid consistency, which makes it easy to pour and mix. Tempera lends itself easily to painting exploration. For beginning artists, the ease at which tempera swishes around on their brush and glides easily across paper makes painting a sensory experience.
"To Mix"
As a painting medium, Tempera has ancient origins. The word "tempera" is derived from the Latin word temperare, meaning "to mix thoroughly". Traditionally, tempera paint has included ground pigment mixed with a binding agent like egg. It has a high viscosity, and dries quickly with a matte, chalky appearance. The modern tempera formulas typically used in school art classes do not contain egg, and are instead made with a synthetic binder.
A Few Tempera Options
Crayola Premier Tempera paint is a premium brand that has advantages in its denser pigments, bright dry colors, and truer mixed colors. A set of six 16 ounce bottles in assorted colors retails for around $45, while individual 16 oz bottles are $8 around each.
Blick Premium Grade Tempera is another excellent choice for dense, true pigments with a slightly lower price point. A set of six 16 oz. bottles, which includes primary colors, plus black and white retails for approximately $27, or $5 per individual 16 oz. bottle.
There are many more economical brands of tempera, but these tend to have a thinner consistency and less pigment, creating an overly transparent effect. When mixed, the colors is are muddier, and more layers need to be applied to achieve opacity.
Cake tempera comes pre-loaded in container much like a muffin tin, making for easy clean-up. As a medium, cake tempera behaves much like a watercolor palette, and produces more muted colors. More watercolor-like consistency and results. A set of six colors retails for around $12. The set of 9 shown here retails for around $27.
Safety: Tempera is generally considered non-toxic, and it safe for skin contact. All of the brands I have listed here have been certified as non-toxic by the Art and Creative Materials Institute, Inc. and they conform to American Society for Testing and Materials guidelines.
Putting it All Together
Efficient methods of set up and clean-up are the biggest challenges to preparing painting lessons, especially in the elementary art classroom. Over the past several years I have experimented with several different kind of recycled materials for use as paint containers. Ice cube trays and muffin tins are wonderful for small groups, but not so much when there are 10 of them to clean out at the end of the day. It ends up becoming a big mess with a lot of water sprayed in your face, not to mention wasted paint.
Keeping paint in small individual, lidded containers allows multiple uses for the same "pour", and also makes for easier clean-up. Wide plastic lids (like those used for takeout containers) also make excellent palates for mixing (I used one for this exploration). Large yogurt containers make for excellent water receptacles.
When introducing paint lessons, it's important to explicitly model every aspect - from cleaning brushes between colors to how to share paint with a table group - and not to take for granted that students will know what to do. The first time I taught a painting lesson with a kindergarten class, paint was everywhere - on the furniture and floor, in their hands and hair and on their clothes. The students definitely had fun exploring with paint, but it showed me that I needed to slow down and demonstrate each and every step.
Exploring with Tempera
Tempera paint layers well, making it easy to create value within colors. Transparency is easily achieved to create a watercolor effect, if desired.
I used the red, blue and yellow colors in the set to create secondary colors for this demo painting. I used heavier weight watercolor paper - which is necessary as it can become heavy with layers of wet paint.
When dry, the matte texture of tempera is a prime surface for other drawing materials. Here, I added detail with pencil and texture with oil pastel to my dried painting.
Tempera Paint and Printmaking
Tempera can be a less expensive and more accessible option as printmaking ink, especially for younger students. Here are some examples of printmaking projects with tempera paint that I have done with elementary students.
From left: Relief prints made with carved potato and found object stamps; Print made from dropping a sheet of paper onto a finger painted design within a metal tray.
Here, students collected leaves and painted over them with tempera, then peeled the leaves away to create negative space.
Sources:
1. Hafeli, M. C. (2015). Exploring studio materials: Teaching creative art making to children. New York: Oxford University Press.
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