Use a small brush to add grain and details.
Wood graining or faux wood finishing is a painter's trick that has many applications. It is used by scenic designers for stage and film and interior designers for wall and other surfaces. The best way to start a faux wood grain project is to locate a clear sample of the wood you want to emulate. Sample chips of wood stains from a paint store make good samples, as does any piece of actual wood. This technique can be used on any surface.
Instructions
Painting the Base
1. Study the grain in your sample. Practice sketching it out a few times to get the feel for the lines in the grain and the strokes that will be required to recreate it. Follow the lines with a finger, noticing whether it is curved, or straight, long or short grained.
2. Choose three colors from your sample. Select the medium tone, which makes up the greatest part of the surface in your sample and purchase paint in that color. Mix a highlight color from this base by adding a small amount of white or light yellow to the base color. Choose white or yellow to best blend with the base. Mix a shadow color with the base and either dark red, or black, depending on your base color.
3. Paint the surface you intend to grain with a medium thick coat of the base color. Work in sections that can be worked in five minutes or less to prevent your paint drying too quickly. Use a soft bristle, wide brush to apply the paint.
Adding Grain and Detail
4. Dip the tips of the bristles of the same brush into your highlight color and drag it lightly through the base color, with a motion similar to the overall shape of the wood grain your are emulating. Do the same with the shadow color, allowing all three to blend as you work so that the base color becomes somewhat mottled, rather than a solid color.
5. Dip a small art brush into the red or black you used to tint your shadows and paint grain lines on the surface, referring to your sample for reference. Use sharp, short strokes to represent pithy grains, such as mahogany or pickled oak, and flowing lines to represent less harsh grains, such as cherry. Also add details, such as knots and eyes, as they appear in your sample.
6. Rinse the art brush and dip it into the white or light yellow you used to mix your highlight. Trace along some of the grain lines to add depth, by contrast. Add the highlights beside the shadows to make them appear deeper.
7. Rinse the wide brush and dry it on a towel. Drag it lightly over the surface, in the shape of the wood grain you are emulating to blend and slightly blur the details, keep in mind the goal of evoking the feeling of the wood, not imitating every line. Allow the paint to dry.
