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Creating a grain finish
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Message
Posted
Colette, thanks - I've seen many videos now in which god-help-us designers bugger up pieces of perfectly fine furniture, and in every single case I have wanted to beat them about the head with a length of four by two.... If they use chalk paint, or lime wash, all they're doing is destroying years of varnish, polish, veneer, in their entirely fatuous desire to "enhance" old furniture; and - if I may express this moderately? - I wish death on them, with added complications.
Posted
Chalk paint? Again, what the hell is that? If you want to create this look in paint, then use acrylic or oil, or gouache, and use a common or garden kitchen fork to scribe into it; or a painting knife; or a palette knife - any of those would work, after a fashion. Come to that, even the handle end of a brush could work - or finger-nails, if you don't mind the effect on your cuticles. Or use a colour-shaper, these days mainly sold for work in pastels. Try painting on any surface you'd like to with a range of materials until you get what you want. This isn't particularly difficult to do - if you want to, experiment will get you there.
Posted
Yes, Slyvia, we've covered fire pit, or you have. We now need to work on 'chalk paint'. Now - you are an older woman than I .... no, hang on; something wrong there..... leave me to work on that one ..... and if anyone has encountered chalk paint, it's likely to be you, given you've been around since before Michaelangelo (no offence...). But if you've heard of chalk paint, I'm damned around the corner with a bent banana if I have, and thus I suspect we're being led on a merry dance by one of fluid morals and a keen sense of mischief. Of course, I may be wrong: which is not for one second to suppose that I shall apologize for it if I am. But I suspect there is dirty work at the crossroads here, since if anyone were seriously in doubt about the efficacy of techniques, they just try them on a bit of spare material. I am not, in short, convinced that this was a genuine inquiry, but rather an attempt to cause us all to look even more foolish than we can look unaided.
Posted
Oh, the stuff they ruin good furniture with on these ghastly 'make-over' programmes! That, and the stripping of polish and varnish to paint god-awful "cheerful" colours over granny's old chest of drawers. I'd come back and haunt anyone who did that to my old furniture.
I will look up Annie Sloan, not expecting to be impressed.
Right, so that's what chalk paint is: a sort of Milk of Magnesia, that someone has run a comb through... But what are you asking? If you want to re-fashion an unfortunate bit of pine, that's one thing; if you're looking to create a similar look in an actual painting, there are easier ways to do it than go out and buy new paint; a bit of acrylic and a bit of scratching should do it: dark colour on first; thinned acrylic - or oil - on top when it's dried; then a scrape with whatever inscribing tool you have available, from the wrong end of a brush to a sharpened match-stick, and there you are; it would work in gouache, and even in watercolour, too.