Uncle NightShift's woodgrain effect copying attempt
The principle in this method was pretty simply. The base was a white or off-white -painted plastic, that had been scoured with a metal brush before painted for the woodgrain effect. Using different browns and greys (the source video had used black and dark grey) little oil dots were put on the plastic, and all that was blended with strokes going along the woodgrain.
I had no black oil paint, so I chose from my collection. The setup ended up being four browns and light grey as a bonus:
- ABT002 Sepia
- ABT092 Ocher
- AT170 Light Grey
- ABT093 Earth
- ABT130 Dark Mud
First oil painting session
The dots I applied with a couple of toothpicks, I started by doing this on one end plank. Maybe I could've been fine with fewer dots, but my previous dot filtering attempt was from a couple of years ago, and then I was tweaking a camouflaged surface. This time I was trying to get something from nothing instead.
After a few swipes I had a light brown plank. I added a couple of darker dots and blended them, as I felt this plank a bit too monotonous. The best thing with oil paints was always that if the result didn't satisfy, it was so very easy to tweak more.
Anyway, I wasn't disappointed in how my first wooden plank looked like, or how painting it with oil paints went. I proceeded to paint the next beams, one by one.
At this point I had to decide what I was actually going for. Either all the wooden parts would be as alike as I could manage, or they'd be whatever and the frame was built of those wood parts that the assembler(s) had available. I decided to go with the "a poor builder cannot afford to be picky" and painted just about all of them in a different way.
Amazingly I got just about the full frame painted in one longer painting session. That rocket packet -side's bottom vertical one was the bit I held on to, so that was going to be painted when the others were at least touch-try. This wet paint was pretty shiny, but I was quite pleased with the overall look already.
Two days later the shininess had gone down a bit, but it wasn't dry by any measure. I wanted to share this photo, as it showed the woodgrain effect much better.
I was thinking of later using one of the darkest paints and then paint some knots as littledots, and the branch shapas as little < angles. With a gentle blending they could bring more woodness into this. We'd see later if I got that excited about this idea.
Second oil painting session
A week later I painted the missing extreme ends' ground-facing bits. The original paintjob was still not completely dry, but it was ok for this work.
This time I limited my paints to three: Earth; Dark Mud; Sepia. The wood beams I painted with the earth and dark mud dots, then added here and there some random sepia dots and the aforementioned angles. With pieces as narrow as these, the < . > shapes didn't survive in the way I hoped. I'd try that trick again later with larger surfaces.
Now it was all painted, and I left it in the box in the sauna to dry for a week. Maybe for two weeks, even.
With enough time passed I coated my wooden setup with the super matt varnish. Maybe I'd need to use satin varnish instead for a more natural look. At least the oils were now protected.