How to paint wood carvings – A complete guide for beginners
Painting on wood is one of the beautiful, interesting, and creative arts that artists can use to turn simple wooden objects and even ordinary pieces of wood into beautiful and various decorative objects and turn them into beautiful and attractive decorative items. In the previous article, we introduced the best wood carving knives in 2021. Now, we are going to tell you everything you need on how to paint wood carvings. Wood painting designs are very diverse, but before drawing the design, the wood must be prepared and laid out for painting. The history of wood painting shows that painting on wood was very common in ancient times, but since wood did not have much resistance, most of them have disappeared.
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Table of contents
Steps must be used to offer extremely beautiful wood carving artworks
- Strong Thinner: It is a type of diluent that is used to loosen the paint, which is removed from the environment after the paint dries without changing the color quality. Instant Thinner is marketed with different degrees of volatility, such as 8000-10000 thinner up to 20000, which is known as Lucid Thinner. Instant Thinner is used to dilute a variety of instant colors, polyester, sealer, and killer.
- Black paste: It is a material that is used in painting wood carvings to cover carving backgrounds.
- Instant paint: It is used to paint the back of wood carving paintings.
- Polishing milk: It is a white liquid whose job is to polish the surface of the wood carving.
- Scotch tape: This tape, which is made of plastic, is used to cover the surface of the glossy wood carving board with paper or newspaper so that the surface of the wood carving does not get scratched when painting.
- Sealers and killers: When polyester is used on wood, peroxide must also be used, so it can cause problems. Phenolic components found naturally in wood can decompose peroxide and weaken the drying film. To reduce these problems, they use polyester on a layer of sealer. The sealer fills the pores of the wood and fills the wood texture.
Painting steps
Before starting the painting process, the wood carving should first be insulated with sealer, chlorine, or polyester. So that it is protected against black materials and may not take on any color. If inlay or metal is used in the wood carving, it is better to insulate it with polyester. Because it heats up and disappears during peeling. After drying, sand the work surface to smooth it. Then glue it around with paper glue, so that it is at most about 1 cm from the edge under the work and 0.5 cm above the wood carving. Before using paper glue, it is better to immediately glue it around and wait for 15 minutes. Then apply the paper glue. Then we clean the work surface and level it somewhere, and if necessary, level the work with a masonry or bubble level.
Painting with acrylic paint on wood
Acrylic paint is used to paint surfaces such as paper, canvas, wood, clothing, cement, brick, and any other surface that is not glossy or greasy. Since dripping oil from these surfaces does not harm them, therefore, there is no need to prepare and substructure the surface. However, if the surface is porous, it has the ability to absorb water. Also must be covered with a layer of paint, putty, or other materials to ensure. In addition, non-porous surfaces such as glass or iron must be prepared first. The method of painting with acrylic paint on wood carvings is that acrylic paint is applied to the wood surface with a sponge. After the first layer dries, we apply the second layer of paint to the wood by hand so that the wood surface is smooth. Continue this painting process until the wood surface is smooth.
After the paint dries, we transfer the desired design with carbon on the wood and paint the design. Due to less chemical pollution, high usability, adhesion quality, longevity, and less chemical pollution of acrylic paint, this paint can be used for handicrafts and collage. In addition, acrylic paint can be diluted and used as a watercolor. Also, acrylic paints are usually light and sometimes oily, but this difference is not significant and can be ignored; the two can be used instead of each other. Acrylic paint has advantages over oil paint. Among which we can mention that it is more vivid and dynamic, odorless, and washable. Also, despite the high cost of acrylic paint, this paint is used in painting buildings in Europe and Western countries. Also, it is the main and base color.