Lesson 1: Media for Walls and Hard Surfaces - Beyond the Usual
Project/Assignment: Faux Marbling with Glazes
Let's try to do a bit of faux painting using glaze. We're going to do some faux marbling - a technique that can be very effective when used on things like stenciled columns or stonework. When using this technique with a stencil you would affix the major overlay of the column to the wall with stencil adhesive, and then, instead of pouncing the color on with the stencil brushes, you literally paint on the faux effect. It goes much faster than traditional stenciling techniques, and looks far more realistic.
Of course with a stenciled column you would also need to shade to create dimension - in which case a diluted glaze with a small bit of your shadow color mixed in would be applied with a large stencil brush at the edges.
But for now we will concentrate on creating the marbled effect.
Ingredients
For this project you will need a
- a practice board,
- a couple of small containers to mix colors and glaze
- two neutral colors (pale gray and beige work well)
- glaze (a small bottle of extender will do well for starters)
- white acrylic as a basecoat
- black acrylic paint for veining
- 2 soft bristled paint brushes 1-2" wide
- a small, pointed artist's brush or feather and
- a sea sponge or wadded soft cloth.
Instructions Note - do not let the number of steps here throw you. They are all simple and take mere seconds apiece. Once you have mastered a few simple things such as twizzling in the veining and sponging on the layers of glaze it is all very simple. I can do the baseboard for an entire large room in a couple of hours.
- Start by painting your practice area white. Allow this coat to dry thoroughly. With acrylic paint this should be thoroughly dry in less than 10 minutes.
- Take one of your two pale neutral colors and mix it with glaze, using twice as much glaze as color. Measuring spoons are helpful here since we are only doing a small sample board. I use coffee scoops for larger projects, keeping careful count of how many scoops of each.
- Repeat with your second neutral
- Now repeat using your white acrylic, only use four parts glaze to one part white..
- Mix a very small portion of black acrylic with an equal part glaze. You will use so little of this that a small puddle on a paper plate or in a bottle cap will suffice.
- Take a slightly damp sea sponge or wadded soft cloth (cheesecloth is ideal, or even wadded dry cleaner's bag - but sea sponge is ideal because it so beautifully replicates the striations of marble. Dip it into one of your neutrals and test it on a piece of newspaper to test for transparency. If it looks opaque, add one more part glaze, mix and try again.
- When you are satisfied with the transparency, dab the sponge or cloth randomly all over the practice board, leaving some open areas but covering roughly 2/3 of the surface.
- Take the small artist's brush and dip the tip into the black glaze/paint mixture. Holding the brush loosely toward the top, sort of twirl the bush lightly through the glaze, creating a few thin "veins". Remember that in real marble all veins tend to run in pretty much the same direction, although they do branch and rejoin.
- Take a clean flat 1-2" brush and brush both glaze and veining diagonally from top left to top right and then from top right to top left.
- Now sponge on the second glaze color in about the same proportion.
- Take the artist's brush and create more veins. In this layer you can create a few more than the first layer, and make some heavier.
- Repeat the step with the diagonal brushing.
- Now use a clean area of sponge of clean rag wad and sponge white glaze/paint lightly over all.
- If you like you can add a few pure white veins running parallel to the black ones. Brush lightly on the diagonal. You can repeat the sponging with the white if you like. This creates the impression that some of the veins are buried more deeply in the marble than others.
If you were doing this with a stencil then certain basics apply. You still don't want to force paint under the stencil edges and muddy your outlines. So you still need to work the paint from the edge to the center as you go. To create dimension you may still want to concentrate some of your darkest neutrals on one side and use more white in the center.
But you have been freed from the small, pouncing motion of the stencil brush and enabled in using larger brushes and strokes to create a faux effect within the confines of the stencil. Much faster!
In any overlays you would use colored glaze instead of opaque paint, although not as diluted as the ones you sponged on.
It may take a few practice boards for you to get the hang of it. But once you do, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can create a fairly realistic marbled surface. To further enhance the illusion you can use a clear topcoat to imitate the shine of polished marble. Or use gloss acrylics to begin with and you can skip the topcoat.
You can do black marble by using a black basecoat and very diluted dark and medium gray sponging, with white and grey veining. Or any other colors that strike your fancy. It may help to look at some real marble first, but remember, you are not trying to create a completely "real" fake here - just a good impression of one.
