Faux Painting a Water Texture

On the Ceiling?  

Well, yes...on the ceiling!  I mean Steampunk is unconventional, right?  So why not?  

My treatment for this room will overall be somewhat unconventional, I guess!  The "theme" of the room is intended to give the subtle impression that one might be underwater.  

Hence, the water texture on the ceiling.  See there IS a thought or two in my head...it is not ENTIRELY empty!

First, I must reveal that I am not "the painter" in the family.  My wife is an excellent painter, and can bring about pure magic when she wants to.  So I gave her the task of helping me figure out the ceiling.  I knew I wanted a water texture...but I  had no idea how to go about it.  

So I left a picture of the general feeling of what I wanted and waltzed off to work and forgot about it all. Here is the picture I provided. 

I came home to several options that she created.  There were actually 5 or 6 options!  How is that for delivering!  I just love having such a useful wife around.  (and I kind of like her a lot too!)

I chose one that I particularly liked as the beginning point.   Here is a picture of the one I liked best. 

This was a fun project!  All loosey goosey...and for me that is an unusual experience.  I personally don't think I am uptight, but there are those who have intimated such a thing!  

I will tell you that letting down and "playing" is NOT an easy task for me...perhaps that is why this hobby is such a great fit for me. 

At any rate, I had a lot of fun.  I'll lay down the process somewhat, though I forgot (of course!) to take a picture or two of parts of the process.  So you'll have to fill in gaps here and there!

The process started with a solid coat of turquoise green...a mixture between equal parts of white, and a Delta Ceramcoat acrylic called 'Christmas Green'. It turned out to be the exact color I was hoping for.  I wanted to come to a related color to the color of the paper I plan to convert into a floor. (pictured at the end of the post!)

I immediately followed that (after listening to the instructions from the lovely Vana White) with an "incomplete" coat of the same color with additional white acrylic added. 

This gave me a varied base coat that goes a long way toward creating the water look by itself. 

The next step was to lay out some new white paint, and add an extender to it.  I used the Floating Medium from Folk Art.

This is where I forgot to take pictures....SORRY!  But I think I can explain using the photo of the final version.

To create the variation, I used white paint and a very thin brush...finer than a pencil point.  I dipped the end of the brush in the white paint and drew lines and other patterns on the ceiling base color.  For the lines, the technique is to lightly hold the brush against the "canvas" and to twist the brush in your hands, not trying to control the outcome.  This was the loosey goosey part!  I had to let down and let it all go.  My tendency is to try and "order" everything...to create a pattern...but while SOME photos of water textures do demonstrate a pattern, that pattern is a very fluid pattern, and frankly, beyond MY ken!

So with gay abandon, I painted thin lines, big white spots, long lines, short lines, fat blobs, you name it...I did it.   The SECRET (as graciously shared by my beautiful wife) is the Floating Medium!  Once I finished playing with paint, (and at various times while painting) I used a CLEAN brush with Floating Medium (no paint in it) to go over the lines, blobs, et. al. here and there.  This blurred the lines to create a wonderful, truly water like effect!  

I finished up, and as I am prone to do, walked just far enough away to force myself to see things differently (i.e. not lines of paint, but a WATER TEXTURE).  :0)    I loved it!  I squealed, clapped and did the dance of joy!...(OK, minor exaggeration that...but I was happy!) 

Thanks to my wife, and her wonderful instructions, my Steampunk Chateau occupants will have a glorious textured ceiling...water texture that is!  May those tiny occupants enjoy that wonderful ceiling as much as I do! 

Hope the process (even without the pictures...duh!) was useful to see!

Until next time!

Doug S