The tablets are thin wooden boards or panels, covered with stucco (plaster) and painted with mineral pigments.

Only eight colours (black, white, blue, red, green, yellow, purple and brown) are used, with no shading or gradation of any sort.

The best known examples of ancient panel painting, the Fayum mummy portraits and the Severan Tondo, are of Roman date.

The Pitsa panels, probably preserved due to the unusual climatic conditions inside the cave, are by far the earliest examples of this technique to survive.

Incidentally, the ancient Greeks believed that panel painting was invented in Sicyon, not far from Pitsa.