All my teenage years I was painting with gouache. This medium became so boring and unpleasant for me. I hated it! But last couple of months I'm starting to refresh my memory and get friendly with gouache and other paints again. Tempera is the cheaper version of gouache, made from egg yolks (instead of gum arabic like gouache) and color pigment.

I have to say that it is not so bad as it used to be, at least while I can pick paper myself and there's no need to draw an old vase that is displayed in front of me on an old scrap of fabric. Now again I can feel joy while painting instead of struggle and boredom!

Because of this guilty new pleasure I want to share the process of drawing colorful flower bouquets.

Drawing with tempera is super simple, just like any other medium. Just make sure to remove the excess water from your brush so that the paint would remain as opaque as possible.

A fun and colorful tutorial on how to draw with gouache paints on colored cardboard!

Flowers painted with tempera on colored cardboard

One layer after another I finished my drawing. Why cardboard? I made sure that it can handle a lot of paint without wrinkling, regular colored paper is failing on this!

All the mystery was in adding a lot of details! Of course one painting was not enough...

Flower painting process using tempera paints

That's it. The whole process took me about 15 minutes to complete both drawings. If you would like to add details with pens to your drawing make sure to test it and see if the pen is good with working on this kind of paints, it's much thicker than watercolors!

I'm thinking to use these cute papers as gift cards, wouldn't you be happy to get one? I would!

So, what do you think? Have you used tempera paints? Share your experience!

See more tutorials!