Egg tempera, encaustic and more paints in Easel by Zaweba

Most painting programs stop at four or five paints. Easel by Zaweba started with watercolour, gouache, acrylic, oil and ink wash, and then version 1.1 added a shelf full more. Some are fine art classics that few people get to try, some are the paints you find in a garage or a classroom, and some are the pastes and grounds that go underneath everything else.

Historic and specialist paints

Egg tempera is the paint of medieval and early Renaissance panels, where pigment is bound with egg yolk. Traditionally it is laid on in fine hatched strokes on a gessoed panel, building colour slowly. Easel has a gessoed panel among its surfaces, which makes a natural pairing.

Casein is another old binder, made from milk protein. It has a matt finish and sits somewhere between gouache and acrylic in feel.

Encaustic is painting with hot wax. In Easel it sets as it cools, and the heat gun melts it again, so you can rework an area by warming it. That is the heart of encaustic: lay wax on, let it set, then fuse and reshape with heat.

Lime-water pigment is for fresco. Paired with the wet plaster surface, it lets you try painting into plaster while it is still damp.

Oil variations

Alkyd and water-mixable oil are two modern takes on oil paint. In the real world alkyd is chosen for faster drying, and water-mixable oil lets painters clean up without solvents. They give you more oil options beside the standard oil, which stays wet for impasto.

Everyday paints

Gloss enamel is the hard, shiny paint of model makers and sign writers. Poster paint is the bright, cheap paint of school art rooms. Household emulsion is the paint on your walls. Acrylic gouache combines a matt finish with the permanence of acrylic. Each brings its own look, and having them in the studio is handy for planning a mural, a sign or a child's project.

Pouring acrylic is fluid paint designed to run. In Easel it runs when the canvas is tilted, and with the pour tool and silicone cells it makes the marbled cells of acrylic pour art.

Grounds, pastes and gels

Gesso is the primer that prepares a surface for paint. Modelling paste builds up thick relief. Impasto and sand gels add body and texture to paint. Because Easel turns paint height into a surface lit by a movable light, thick additions show ridges and texture, especially on oil and acrylic work.

Trying them well

Approach each paint the way its real users do. Tempera wants patience and thin layers. Encaustic wants you to embrace heat and rework. Pouring acrylic wants tilt. Modelling paste wants a light from the side to show off what you built.

It is tempting to treat every paint as a variation on acrylic. Resist that. The pleasure of this shelf is that each one invites a different way of working, and Easel by Zaweba lets you try them all without buying a single tube or cleaning a single brush.