How to Use tempera in a Sentence

tempera

noun
  • Someone had crudely daubed the keys with red and yellow tempera paint.
    John Kelly, Washington Post, 2 July 2017
  • The work is mostly made with tempera, but oil paint has been used for the background and some secondary elements.
    Jacopo Prisco, CNN, 28 Mar. 2023
  • So, what made tempera reign supreme among the Renaissance giants?
    Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Dec. 2021
  • On view in the show are 79 prints, watercolors and paintings in tempera on paper.
    Steven Litt, cleveland, 14 Mar. 2021
  • Mark Rothko, Red and Pink on Pink, c.1953, tempera on paper mounted on board with acrylic painted surround.
    Celia Ellenberg, Vogue, 15 Sep. 2022
  • These were spurred in part by the growing use of oil paint over egg tempera, which allowed for more lavish colors and textures — all the better to depict the one percent.
    Roberta Smith, New York Times, 24 June 2021
  • For these experiments, the researchers made their own egg tempera.
    Eva Amsen, Forbes, 12 Apr. 2022
  • The painting, in vivid red, gold and brown tempera on hardboard, shows two women draped in shawls flanking a man in a broad-brimmed hat, their heads bowed and oversized hands clasped toward the center of the image.
    New York Times, 1 Mar. 2021
  • Painted in 1445 in egg tempera and gold, this wooden panel was once part of an altarpiece — known as the Guelfi altarpiece — the main part of which is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
    Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2021
  • Using the classical egg tempera method of painting, de la Hoz explored a range of concepts and characters in the series.
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 July 2022
  • Holi Hands Gather a variety of colored tempera paints and a few paintbrushes.
    Christina Montoya Fiedler, Woman's Day, 24 Feb. 2023
  • The penguins dip their feet into the washable tempera paint and run amock over the canvases, adding their personal, creative touches.
    Kelsey Grey, idahostatesman, 19 June 2018
  • Other songs are presented in cut-paper collage and tempera paint.
    BostonGlobe.com, 1 July 2021
  • The 1893 version in the Oslo museum’s collection, painted in tempera with pastels, is the original.
    Nora McGreevy, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Feb. 2021
  • Because Giampietrino used oil paint on canvas, as opposed to Leonardo's tempera and oil paint on a dry wall, the proxy has withstood the test of time much better than the original work.
    Courtney Linder, Popular Mechanics, 22 June 2020
  • This morning, while my partner took a work call, my children dumped six large bottles of tempera paint all over our rug, sofa and dining table, extending to the bathroom and kitchen.
    Kevin Noble Maillard, New York Times, 20 Mar. 2020
  • Acrylics, watercolors, and tempera paint are also suitable for kids.
    Jennifer Blair, chicagotribune.com, 22 Dec. 2020
  • Parents can turn prevention into a fun family project by taking a chalk pen or tempera paints and drawing on windows.
    Christina Tkacik, Howard County Times, 3 May 2018
  • In Andy’s studio, a bowl of deep purple mussel shells stained with paint sit on a table next to an easel; Wyeth mixed his delicate egg tempera pigments in those shells, which lent them their preternatural tones.
    Murray Whyte, BostonGlobe.com, 4 Aug. 2022
  • Artists can bring other art materials such as pastels, tempera paint, tape, stencil.
    Kristi Nix, Houston Chronicle, 22 Aug. 2019
  • They were known as masters of the new medium of oil painting, which allowed unprecedented levels of refined detail, as compared to the older medium egg tempera.
    Benjamin Lima, Dallas News, 11 Mar. 2023
  • For this Easter egg painting project, simply find several colors of washable tempera paint and ½-inch-wide flat paintbrushes, then go wild with designs!
    Emily Vanschmus, Better Homes & Gardens, 20 Oct. 2022
  • Trumbull created the effect in a huge aquarium tank filled with fresh and saltwater and by injecting white liquid tempera paint to create the strange cloud formations.
    Rhett Bartlett, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Feb. 2022
  • Art will be judged in two categories: drawing (pencil, pen and ink, charcoal, or pastel) and painting (oils, watercolors, tempera, acrylics or pastel).
    Staff Report, NOLA.com, 6 Sep. 2020
  • The team's egg tempera also provided more coverage and elasticity as well.
    Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Dec. 2021
  • So understated are these frames that one’s attention remains firmly on the works themselves, with their bright egg-tempera colors and their first steps toward naturalism.
    Cammy Brothers, WSJ, 1 Aug. 2018
  • Most spectacular is a watercolor and tempera plan of the library’s floor mosaic, a consummate study in the adjustment of color values, coming to rest on a central disk of antique porphyry.
    Michael J. Lewis, WSJ, 27 July 2022
  • Available classes include tempera painting for children ages six to 10, an outdoor photograph workshop on Sept. 24, watercolor painting and acrylics.
    Hartford Courant, 8 Sep. 2022
  • Transcendentally rendered in tempera on board—in an earthy palette of brown, blue, mustard, and green, almost always violently disrupted by red—each work compresses the dynamic sweep of a history painting into a modest twelve by sixteen inches.
    Andrea K. Scott, The New Yorker, 30 Dec. 2020
  • Sometimes schoolchildren decorate exterior glass with tempera paint murals, for example.
    Victoria Bekiempis, Curbed, 28 May 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tempera.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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