The Decorative Finish II

 

TPW Color wash I

Prior to the year 2000 latex house paint had a measure of talc or other similar material that caused the paint to be opaque. For best results two coats were recommended. Since 2000 paint manufacturers have begun to eliminate the talc and to make less opaque paints. In part this came about because suburban housewives/decorators wanted walls in which the color had “more depth”. Whereas the older paints covered nicely with the recommended two coats the new paints require at least three and often four or five coats. This means more cans of paint and more money for the paint store and manufacturer. It also means that the cheaper the paint the more you will buy and usually you end up paying more for cheap paint than good.

On exteriors the new paints have a very limited life and begin to wash off almost immediately. I have seen building facades here in Oaxaca painted in February and in March a year later you can begin to see the individual brush strokes. Two years later the building front looks like a badly executed color wash. It has a stressed look but one that was not intended.

This might also have to do with some of the painters here putting on very thin coats of paint. I have observed them running a roller load of paint up and down the wall long beyond its ability to achieve good coverage. In painting the rule is two thin coats are better than one thick coat. But there are limits.

Color washing is a technique in which a thinned paint or a glaze is applied over a well prepared base color. Often the glaze color is applied with a larger brush and sometimes even with a wallpaper paste brush. The glaze coat can be laid on with small careful loads or with bold sweeping arcs. The important point is to make all of the brush patterns the same over the entire wall...so that it looks like a purposeful effort. In a sense a color wash is like a modern abstract expressionist painting in that it has an all over design.

In summer stock we would paint the sets flat on the ground, usually in the parking lot, and after applying the color wash, which we employed to give the effect of a thick stucco wall, we would spatter them all over with the same or other colors giving it a greater sense of unity, depth, and texture. Unfortunately it is not possible to spatter the wall of your living room or building front because it makes a 360 degree mess and because the wet, diluted, spatter paint usually runs on a vertical surface. Thus the effect desired in color washing is to achieve a controlled but spontaneous not careless and sloppy finish

Making my rounds here in Oaxaca I often stop and look at a painted finish and try to determine if what I see was intended or has simply resulted. Have a look and tell me what you see…

The close up of the yellow wall is a color wash over and emphasizing the heavy stucco finish. It is well done. About four or five years ago I observed the blue and the green buildings being painted. Time has not been on their side. In addition, on the grren building you can see where graffiti has been rollered out and notice how the same color appears as two colors because of the weathering element.

The pop quiz addresses the blue and yellow section of a wall. Is this a color wash or weathered paint? You have 5 minutes to submit your answer.