Return to The Show Page
Jon Szalay writes:
Now that I have got your attention, Get your minds out of the
gutter and have a look at this job I just finished for a client.
Sorry but no dancing girls, just my first attempt at a grain painted Faux finish.
I followed directions In the book "Professional Painted Finishes"
by Ina Brosseau Marx, Allen Marx and Robert Marx
This particular client had this gold painted, carved gesso chair circa 1940
that was terribly refinished and did not match the dozen or so mahogany
pieces that I did for her last year, so I suggested a dark antique looking
country burled grain finish to her and she let me run with it.
It was not a terribly hard thing to do and started with making
my own graining glazes with instructions from the book.
I used the solids from the bottom of the can from dark mahogany and
walnut Minwax stains mixed with mohawk glaze medium and paint thinner
(2 -1 -1) second glaze was mixed the same way but with burnt umber
Japan color (1/2 part) added to make a slightly darker glaze.
The lighter glaze was applied over a light colored base coat that was first
sealed with shellac. Using a 1" foam brush this lighter graining glaze
was dabbed in an irregular pattern in a small area the same was done
with the darker glaze in between the light colored glaze.
Paint thinner is applied in between the glaze strokes on top of all the areas
of exposed glaze coat a piece of crumpled 1 mil plastic is rolled over the
wet surface and this fragments the glaze into a nice unpatterned look
pressing gloved fingertip in the dark patches makes the "knots"
A lettering brush is then swirled through the glaze to simulate grain patterns.
The darker glaze is then applied with a very small script liner brush
adjacent to one side of a knot or knot cluster to simulate "eyes".
After you're done playing with the look, the surface is again
sealed with shellac and then your finish of choice can be applied
( I used lacquer ) with glaze coats added to add depth as desired.
I used a dark wax to finish it off after all was cured well.
I was after a pretty dark antique look for this chair to match her other
furniture and wanted the graining to be subtle. A carved chair like this
was not the easiest form to start with since it was very hard to simulate
convincing burled carving which is seldom seen in antique furniture
due to the unstable nature of burl lumber.
This technique lends itself much better to larger flat panels and I plan on
doing a set of lighter colored small bookcases in the near future to improve
my technique and try the acrylic colors from Golden paints.
I apologize for the pictures -- they really don't show the painted grain too well,
this is a very dark piece and was hard to photograph the burled styled graining.
I didn't really keep track of the hours, but it was quite a few,
since I was on a learning curve. I would estimate several hours
but I was having so much fun doing it time really flew.
With practice this could be done in about 4-5 hours total working hours.
I charged her $550.00
Jon Szalay
Barnegat NJ
