Paint Type

Tempera Paint

Modern tempera is an opaque, water-based art paint used for school and craft projects, drying quickly and differing from traditional egg tempera.

Tempera paint surface compatibility

Tempera paint suits sturdy paper and cardboard; use it on wood or ceramic only when the product label specifically approves those surfaces for use.

Surface	Compatibility	Preparation	Primer	Finish	Guide
Paper	Excellent for school art and crafts	Use paper sturdy enough for the amount of paint and water.	Usually not required.	Decorative; protect finished work from water and abrasion.	—
Cardboard	Excellent for crafts and school art	Use clean, dry cardboard and keep paint and added water moderate to reduce softening or warping.	Usually not required.	Decorative; keep the finished cardboard dry and protect it from abrasion.	—
Air-Dry Clay	Good for decorative craft projects	Let the clay dry completely and brush away loose surface dust before painting.	Usually optional for simple craft use; a compatible sealer can reduce uneven absorption.	Protect with a compatible finish when the piece needs better resistance to handling or moisture.	—
Wood	Good when the product approves wood	Use clean, dry wood and smooth rough areas.	Product-specific.	Best for decorative craft use rather than weather or heavy handling.	—
Ceramic	Good when the product approves ceramic	Use clean, dry ceramic and test adhesion, especially on a glazed surface.	Product-specific.	Decorative only unless the complete system states otherwise; not for food-contact surfaces.	—

Sources: Crayola Artista II Washable Tempera Paint, Crayola air-dry clay decorating guidance, and Prang Ready-to-Use Tempera Paint.

Artist tempera comparisons

For comparison with modern school tempera, these profiles cover egg tempera and other artist formulations, including works whose binders are unspecified.

Andrew Wyeth
The Whitney identifies Winter Fields (1942) as tempera on composition board. Its catalog does not specify the binder, so the medium should remain “tempera” rather than being silently relabeled egg tempera. This example documents Wyeth’s use of tempera on a rigid board support, apart from his watercolors and oils.
Sandro Botticelli
The Uffizi identifies Botticelli’s Primavera (c. 1480) as tempera grassa on wood, while The Birth of Venus is cataloged as tempera on canvas. These museum records document tempera across two supports but do not establish an egg-yolk binder, so the medium remains tempera rather than egg tempera.
Jacob Lawrence
Lawrence used casein tempera across the sixty panels of The Migration Series, which MoMA catalogs as casein tempera on hardboard. The quick-setting, matte medium suited the coordinated blocks of color and sharply bounded forms that carry the series’ account of migration; the panels were planned to work as one sustained narrative.
George Tooker
Government Bureau (1956) is egg tempera on wood. The Met documents the medium and support; the Whitney notes Tooker’s fine egg-tempera layers reveal the white gesso ground. This controlled surface suits the scene’s sharply delineated figures and enclosed compartments, distinct from his paper drawings and studies.
Paul Cadmus
The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride (1948) is egg tempera on gessoed linen over Masonite. Cadmus used the fine control of this medium to model sharply defined figures and arrange them within a tightly packed allegory. The prepared linen and hardboard backing form a layered support for the carefully worked image.
Ben Shahn
MoMA records Pacific Landscape as tempera on paper over composition board, and the Met identifies tempera in Death of a Miner. These works document Shahn’s use of tempera in socially engaged subjects and landscapes. The records do not name an egg binder, so the broader medium name should be retained.
Koo Schadler
Schadler builds paintings with egg tempera, working in small, controlled strokes and layers on a prepared panel. Her technique notes identify egg yolk as the binder, allowing the medium to be described specifically rather than as generic tempera. The slow, deliberate process supports fine detail and carefully modulated color.
Reginald Marsh
Marsh made egg-tempera paintings such as The Bowery (1930) and Coney Island Beach. The Met describes tempera on Masonite, while the Smithsonian identifies egg tempera and ink on fiberboard. These records support an egg binder for documented works and show his use of prepared rigid panels for urban scenes.
Robert Vickrey
The Smithsonian identifies Vickrey’s Fear (1954) as egg tempera on paperboard and describes his meticulous, finely detailed tempera practice. He built controlled passages over a prepared surface, using the medium for precise, illusionistic scenes. Paperboard is the support, not part of the paint binder.
Paul Klee
Klee combined oil and tempera in Around the Fish (1926), where symbols, colored shapes, and a central fish float against a dark ground. Pastorale (Rhythms) (1927) is tempera on canvas mounted on wood. MoMA lists tempera without specifying an egg binder in either record, so the works should not automatically be described as egg tempera.
Frida Kahlo
MoMA records My Grandparents, My Parents, and I as oil and tempera on zinc, showing Kahlo’s use of two paints together on a metal support. The work combines a family-tree structure with autobiographical imagery. The museum names tempera but does not specify its binder, so it should not be relabeled egg tempera.
Joan Miró
The Met identifies tempera and oil together in Miró’s Painting (1927). Its record does not specify an egg binder, so the medium should remain identified as tempera rather than being narrowed to egg tempera. Here it is one component of a mixed-media painting on canvas.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo’s The Last Supper was painted on a dry preparatory layer with a greasy tempera containing egg yolk, according to the Cenacolo Vinciano. Because he worked on dry plaster rather than into wet lime, the mural is not true fresco. This experimental method contributed to its distinctive materials and conservation challenges.
Michelangelo
The Uffizi identifies Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo (1505–06) as tempera grassa on wood. The museum record names the technique but does not specify an egg binder, so this is not narrowed to egg tempera. The tempera panel is distinct from the fresco process used for his architectural commissions.
Bernard Perlin
The Smithsonian records Perlin’s The Farewell (1952) as casein on fiberboard. This specific catalog entry documents casein on a rigid manufactured support and distinguishes the work from his oils on canvas. The medium appears in Perlin’s figurative painting practice, but it should not be generalized to works whose records identify another paint.
Peter Hurd
The New Mexico Museum of Art records Hurd’s Portrait of Gerald Marr as egg tempera on gesso and Masonite. Its Rio Hondo record likewise identifies egg tempera on gesso, this time on a wood panel. Hurd used the medium for detailed portraits and landscapes on carefully prepared rigid supports.
Mavis Smith
Smith builds paintings in egg tempera over gesso, applying thin layers to a rigid panel. Red Room (2013) is documented as egg tempera on panel, and her process notes identify egg yolk as the binder. The prepared ground and careful layering support her detailed imagery and controlled color.
Jared French
The Whitney identifies egg tempera as French’s preferred medium and catalogs State Park (1946) as tempera on composition board. The precise egg binder is not specified in that object record, but the museum documents his use of tempera for tightly controlled forms and sharply defined surfaces.
Fred Wessel
Wessel’s paintings are made in egg tempera, built through controlled, translucent layers on a prepared panel. His work appeared in the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts exhibition Eternal Beauty, devoted to his tempera paintings. Artist and technical sources document the binder and process, distinguishing his practice from oil and acrylic painting.
Michael Bergt
Bergt’s Venus and Held are documented as egg tempera on panel. He builds their precise, figurative surfaces in thin layers, using the quick-drying binder for detailed transitions and crisp edges. The museum records identify egg tempera explicitly, distinguishing it from his later mixed use of acrylic.
Otto Dix
MoMA explicitly lists tempera alongside oil and metal leaf in Dr. Mayer-Hermann, painted on wood. The museum does not specify the tempera binder, so it should not automatically be identified as egg tempera; Dix's precise modeling drew on older German painting traditions without simply reproducing one historic recipe.
Varvara Stepanova
For comparison, In Billiard Players (1920), oil on canvas, Stepanova built figures from angular blocks and overlapping curves, arranging the players as if their bodies were machines in motion. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum notes the painting's dotted and crosshatched marks, which give parts of its surface a graphic quality. MoMA's Figure (1921) is also oil on canvas, with a single powerful body assembled from geometric shapes. The clear forms connect her easel painting to Constructivist design without making these canvases printed textiles.
Bridget Riley
Fission (1962) is tempera on board, with black dots that compress toward the center to suggest the surface is buckling inward. MoMA lists the paint simply as tempera without an egg-binder specification; the precise graphic effect does not, by itself, establish which tempera recipe she used.
Lucia Di Luciano
For comparison, In Discontinuous Structural Articulation (1964), Di Luciano used black and white household emulsion paint on Masonite. The work’s measured geometry is applied to a rigid board, documenting an architectural coating used as an art material rather than assuming artist-grade acrylic. Its pared-back palette makes the surface and structure especially clear.
Konrad Lueg
MoMA identifies Lueg’s Untitled (Uncle) (1965) as casein tempera on canvas. The museum record supports a casein-based tempera medium without specifying an egg binder. Lueg’s restrained image turns a familiar figure into a cool, matter-of-fact painting, tied to the early German Pop context of his work.
Mark Tobey
In Edge of August (1953), Tobey covered a large board with casein paint. Its fine, closely layered strokes form an all-over field without one dominant center. MoMA's medium record explicitly identifies casein, a paint bound with milk protein, rather than tempera or oil for this painting.
Albrecht Dürer
For comparison, The Albertina catalogs The Hare (1502) as watercolor and bodycolor, heightened with white. The sheet records Dürer’s close study of an animal through layered, highly controlled color. Because the catalog separates watercolor from bodycolor, the entry preserves both terms instead of treating the work as transparent watercolor alone.
Giorgio de Chirico
The Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico records Self-Portrait in Armour (1948) as tempera and oil on canvas. The Wadsworth Atheneum identifies graphite and tempera on handmade paper in de Chirico's Costume design for the Astrologer in “Le Bal” (1929). The binder of the tempera is not specified in these records; neither example establishes that his 1910s piazzas were tempera paintings.
Paul Ranson
The Musée d’Orsay records Ranson’s Lustral as tempera on canvas. The catalog does not specify the binder, so the medium remains tempera rather than egg tempera. The work belongs to his decorative Symbolist practice, where simplified forms and patterned color organize a mythic subject.
Caravaggio
Technical analysis found egg tempera in white paint passages in The Supper at Emmaus and Boy Bitten by a Lizard, alongside walnut-oil paint. The finding applies to localized white passages, not to the paintings as a whole. It documents a specific material use and should not be generalized to every work by Caravaggio.
Marie Spartali Stillman
The Delaware Art Museum catalogs tempera in Love’s Messenger but does not identify its binder, so the medium remains unspecified. The same work includes watercolor and gold paint, which the museum lists separately; this distinction avoids assuming egg tempera or treating the metallic paint as leaf.
Wassily Kandinsky
Colored Sticks (1928) is varnished tempera on paperboard, while Green Accent (November 1935) combines tempera with oil on canvas. The Guggenheim's records do not specify an egg binder, so “tempera” should not be narrowed to egg tempera for these works.
Marc Chagall
For comparison, MoMA catalogs Chagall’s I and the Village (1911) as oil on canvas. Interlocking planes and remembered village imagery overlap in a large-scale composition, joining scenes from his life in Vitebsk to Parisian modernism. This work anchors oil as his principal medium for many finished paintings.
Diego Rivera
In The Flower Carrier, Rivera used tempera alongside oil on Masonite. The museum record identifies the mixed medium but does not specify an egg binder, so the broader term “tempera” is retained. This documented panel painting is distinct from the fresco technique used for his public murals.
José Clemente Orozco
LACMA catalogs Orozco’s Street Corner, Brick Building as tempera and oil on board. The object record documents tempera as part of his easel painting practice alongside the oils and frescoes for which he is better known; the museum does not identify an egg binder.
Francesco Clemente
Guggenheim Bilbao records tempera with oil on linen in Mother’s Room, while the Städel Museum documents tempera and oil on linen in Tandoori Satori Nr. 15. Both records confirm tempera as a recurring material in his painted installations and canvases. The works document the combination rather than treating tempera as a standalone paint.