Rainbow white

[darkemeralds]

Since creating my not-really-black Rothko Walls in the living room a couple of years ago, I've been wanting to do a not-really-white version in the bedroom. Today I bought some paint and started experimenting.



The technique starts with six quarts of paint.

(Speaking of colorful, King Cake for Mardi Gras in the lower left--brought to me by my neighbor from Louisiana.)

You daub the paint on with a sopping brush in big, thick strokes. It's a careless, untidy process, super forgiving and easy to do. You can play around with color proportions: here, pure white gets the most brushfuls, beige gets the fewest.


It's really messy:


After you load up a section of wall, you smudge the brushstrokes madly with a lambswool pad before the paint has a chance to set:

Could use a little more smudging to obliterate the brushstrokes and the drips better.

I think I like the result. I'll know more in the morning light when the paint is completely dry.

Comments

[donutsweeper]

Oooh, that's a nice effect!

[darkemeralds]

I'm kind of pleased with it. Plus, it's fun to do.

[tehomet]

That looks great.

And I love the term 'sopping brush.' :)

[darkemeralds]

Heh. This technique uses all the suggestive terms!

[ravurian]

I like it (and I adore the first iteration in the living room), but I wonder if it might also need a little pop of something else? Maybe a little gold or silver in the mix?

[darkemeralds]

Silver! Good idea. I believe I've got some around--I'll give it a try.

[nanila]

Oh, I really like that! Are you going to do all the walls that way, or just one as a "feature"?

[darkemeralds]

I'm still experimenting, but the general idea is that three walls will be done in this technique, and the fourth, the feature wall, will be black. Per a couple of other comments here, I'm testing the addition of some pearl powder to the mix.

wall color

[greenevergreen]

pearlizing seems like a subtle, elegant boost to the mix.

Re: wall color

[darkemeralds]

I'm going to do some experimenting tomorrow--happen to have some pearl powders on hand. I can't quite tell whether the additional sheen emphasizes the wall's flaws or sort of halos them out. We'll see.

[owzers]

Wow!!!! I love that!!! Makes me feel all daydreamy and relaxed looking at it. Good job hon! The piled up stuff in the other room reminds me of my place - our patio is piled up with furniture projects and covered with plastic tarps. We just had a 3 day rain (yay!) and had to get everything under cover.

[darkemeralds]

I've been experimenting with adding Pearl-Ex powders to the painted walls, and I think I'm going to really like the shimmery effect. It adds a magical quality to what are otherwise basically white surfaces, and I think the whole effect will be soft enough to balance out the black-and-white-ness of the room (and my mind).

Glad to hear you've finally gotten some rain. The Hollywood types I follow on Twitter have been mentioning it with varying degrees of jokiness about Angelenos' tolerance for the inconvenience of a little water falling out of the sky.