A single color, smooth background makes easy constrast for bright yet subdued hues. Blending with purples, pinks and oranges, the tempera nicely modifies the pure hue intensities.

THE MOST POPULAR CHOICE: SMOOTH!

Not surprisingly, most students favored the soft intermixes of white tempera transforming watercolors that seemed to "stay put". This was most successful on non-textured backgrounds.

Although most preferences were for smooth backgrounds, multi-tints were popular options as seen above in these two examples, with touches of blue, green and yellow as quiet accents.

This was a most interesting mixed media combination. Not too thrilled at first with the somewhat muted colors, students found the results of blending the tempera at different degrees led to pleasant discoveries about watercolor control. It was a "different" style of painting, and that was usually a positive start.

It was exciting to see the practice experiments and even a larger satisfaction as painters learned and believed more strongly that bright, intense color need not always be the way to go.

Materials to paint in this manner are easily available. Give it a try and discover for yourself the joy of smooth vs. textural tempera backgrounds iced with subdued watercolor frosting. It's delicious!