faux painting techniques for free

Lets start with marbling. This is a really effective and surprisingly easy technique to get the hang of. You will surprise yourself with how quickly you can achieve some spectacular results..

4 small tins of paint (emulsion tester pots, oils, acrylics and even watercolours are all good). Get one light colour such as a cream or stone for the base and other darker colours (terracotta, brown and granite for example) plus an off-white

1st lay down a base coat of the cream or stone colour. The key here is to get an absolutely perfectly smooth surface. One of the defining characteristics of marble is it polished appearance. Therefore any lumps and bumps will make your Faix marble  look less authentic.

Step two is to then draw a few thin diagonal squiggly lines of terracotta and blend them in as in the next picture

Wait for that to dry and then add a few granite squiggles in the opposite direction and blend again.

Now add some white. make these lines close and occassionally over the top of the terracotta lines you painted earlier.

add more white and finally some subtle browns

There you have it, a finished marble effect. In the example above Ihave used natural shades, but there is nothing to stop you marnbling with bright colours. As a student we created a wall of purple marble effect. The technique is versatile and you will find that you rapidly become proficient at this craft.

Here are some more marbles I have created 

This was painted on wood using gloss paint which madethe paint easy to spread around.

In stead of 4 layers I tried 9 layers and all done with a splatter brush to get a much grainier texture

With this one, rather than inventing the lines I actually copied a real piece of marble. There are 20 layers here so it took 2 weeks, but the result was really pleasing.