Milk, Tempera and King Tut

by Andrea Mulder-Slater

Would you like to add a little zing to your paintings? 

If so, simply gather some canned condensed milk, powdered tempera paint, a mixing bowl, paintbrushes and paper.

Ready, set go and put a small amount of powdered tempera into the mixing bowl. If you don't have powdered tempera, you can use chalk dust or even food colouring instead. 

Next, add a few drops of condensed milk to the tempera. 

Keep adding more condensed milk until you have a nice, gooey mixture that's not too thick and not too runny. 

Then, take your newly created paint and start painting a picture. Because you have used milk instead of water to make your paint, your painting will have a nice shiny gloss to it when it dries. 

Store all of the unused milk paint in a lidded container in the fridge.

Did you know... 

Some of the oldest paintings in the world were painted with milk paint.

According to the folks at The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company in Groton, Massachusetts, "Cave drawings and paintings made 8,000 years ago, even as old as 20,000 years ago, were made with a simple composition of milk, lime, and earth pigments. When King Tutankhamen's tomb was opened in 1924, artifacts including models of boats, people, and furniture found inside the burial chamber had been painted with milk paint."

Now you know.


Find thousands of FREE art lesson plans at http://www.kinderart.com.

Keep creating!
~Andrea