We recently got our hands on this solid wood ornately carved beauty (pardon the iPhone shot at night but I just couldn’t wait to snap a shot):
Can you even believe it? It is so intricately carved and heavy! But it LOOKS heavy, too and needed some lightening up. There are many approaches to highlighting relief – the easiest being “dry brushing” which is essentially painting with an almost-dry brush, sweeping the paint along the high points without stippling in the low.
Here’s the first coat of Country Grey above (from the Annie Sloan website: Country Grey is a perfect cool soft neutral. Made with raw umber pigment, it is the classic choice for so much painted furniture.) You can see I didn’t allow the paint to rest heavy in the low points, rather I lightly brushed it along the tops of the carvings so the dark wood showing gave it some dimension.
Here it is just a little bit further along…
And here it is – still in progress – with Old White lightly dry brushed over the dry Country Grey. The next step will be sealing it. So far, it has a nice matte stone look and I will likely try to preserve that. Come visit our shop in Montclair: 182 Glenridge Ave to see it in person!
#anniesloan #beforeandafter #brooklyn #chalkpaint #classes #diy #drybrush #eastvillage #etsy #longisland #montclair #newjersey #northnj #nj #nyc #pa #paintproject #paintprojects #pennsylvania #wheretobuy #workshops