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Faux Woodgraining
Woodgraining with a Brush - part 2
Brush Graining: Negative Method - Brushes and Techniques
(continued)
Splicing
Small pieces of trim such as door casings or chair rail moldings etc... do not need to be spliced, but are grained in one continuous graining process.
On larger pieces of wood trim / surfaces you will need to splice the graining as would be done with real wood. A flush door for instance, would not be made from one three foot wide cut of lumber from one log, but would be four or six or more pieces of lumber spiced together to make up the three foot width. Splicing with graining is done by masking off with easy release brown paper tape or the blue tape. I use the brown paper tape for this because the adhesive is much lighter than even the blue tape. Mask off alternate strips for your graining (each strip could be 4 - 6 inches wide) and grain one "set" of strips on "day 1" and the alternate "set" of strips on "day 2" when the previous graining is dry enough to mask off alternately.
Wet on wet splicing
You don't have to mask off your splicing (If you are doing one day - one layer graining, you may not want to mask off the splicing because that will take an extra day. On larger jobs where you will be working more than one day, I recommend masking off the splicing) you can splice wet on wet. This method does not give quite as clean a joint as taping and limits the variation with which you can do your graining a bit. The easiest way to splice is to run (fairly) straight grain down through the middle of curved and meandering grain which will create three spliced pieces of wood. The sample on page one of this article is a wet on wet spliced graining where two different types of dragged grain are joined abruptly together.
- Trace the grain with a fine comb
You must use a fine comb or you will erase your previous graining. The fine edge of the three sided rubber comb will work. I also use the fine steel comb of the Symphony line of faux tools ( now owned by Purdy at the time of this writing).
- Lightly flog the grain
Using a badger brush or synthetic badger brush and lightly flog the grain with the flat side of the bristles.
- Add an accented (darker) grain line with a liner brush
Add a grain line here and there from one end to the other end of the board - or just accent a part of the grain without going from end to end. I use a liner brush to do this. Dip the brush into the glaze and add the lines where you need them for variety. Add little steaks too with the liner brush too as you would see in real wood.
- Mottling
You can mottle over the top of your graining while it is wet but you must do so lightly and sparingly. It is very easy to erase your previous graining with mottling if you are not careful. The best way to mottle is over a dry graining layer as a "overgraining" layer. Use a mottler or wavy mottler for the best mottling. You may find that other brushes work for mottling as well.
- Roll the suface with a check roller
You can add pores to the wood in a postive way by check rolling. You may want to add some lamp black or burnt umber to your glaze mixture for this or they pore might not show up. I use the check roller with a short nap mini roller as a feeder roller for my check rolling.
- Add a knot (or "implied knot")
Don't overdo the knots. Good quality wood has very few knots so don't do more than the occaisional small knot. Knots in woodgrainng are done with a round stencil brush. The brush is simply rotated in a circle to form the knot. The woodgrain leading up to and from the knot should semi circle around the knot. Implied knots are like the sample for this article where the grain abuptly curls to and then from the edge of the board.
- Steak the graining glaze
This step you will do before you do your dragging - I am putting it here because it is another way to add variety to your graining. Instead of uniformly applying the glaze prior to dragging, add some heavier streaks of glaze using the same glaze or with a separate glaze mixed with some lamp black. After streaking the glaze, you then would drag it out as outlined above and then add any extra details following the dragging.
- Add heart grain for variety
See Woodgraining a Six Panel Door part 2 for heart graining instructions.
By mixing negative tecniques with positive techniques, you will get the most out of one layer graining.
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Add detail to you dragging
For small pieces of trim simply dragging them out with the variations described above is sufficient. Larger and more prominent pieces of trim may require additional detailing in order to do a convincing job.
You can add one or more of the follow techniques to give your graining more detail. You don't need to do all of the techniques at once, try one with one board and another one with another board to give each board a little variation.
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