Brush With Death

“Marbling” was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially in the European colonies, where wealthy residents hired itinerant artists to mimic expensive marbles and semiprecious stones on trim carved out of cheap, locally available woods. Today’s faux-finishing techniques can lend the beauty and formality of stone to any paintable surface, from furniture to fireplace mantels to entire walls . . . even cars!

Standard Beige Veined Marble

Marbling Supplies:

Base Coat: Off-white, beige-gray semigloss alkyd interior house paint

Note: Paint color choices depend upon the stone you want to mimic! Feel free to experiment with lighter glazes on a black background, for example.

Very soft, dry, three-inch paintbrush

Thin “liner” artist brushes for veins

Feathers (Goose are great; any large enough to paint with will do. Don’t buy them—I pick them up off the ground.) Clean cotton rags or cheesecloth

Plastic dishes, shallow bowls, or palettes

Before you start:

Study. Look at real samples of the stone you wish to mimic, and note how the veins run, how mottled the background is, and the variation in color and texture. Many marble and stone distributors have broken tiles or parts of slabs that are free and readily available. Some will even chip off little pieces of slabs of special stones, or offer inexpensive samples.

Decide whether you want a polished finish, which means that the colors are deeper and shiny (as though wet), or a honed finish, which looks matte and almost dusty, and not as colorful.

Prepare the surface. Sand or spackle so that the surface is as smooth as possible if you are going for a “polished” look. If you are a free spirit (or lazy, like me) simply transform surface imperfections into marble veins, pits, and splotches.

Paint the base coat. Apply base coat and allow it to dry thoroughly according to the manufacturer’s directions. Remember, other colors may be used for different effects, such as black for Tinos Green or Red Levanto marble, orangey-red for Rosso Verona, dark beige for travertine limestone. No need to stick to nature, either: your imagination is the only limit. Just remember that the base color will show through and provide your background color.

First of all, protect your hands with gloves!

Create a mottled background texture over base paint. Wad up a cotton rag or cheesecloth and wet it with mineral spirits and a little glaze medium. Dab it into a small amount of white glaze poured onto a palette or plastic dish. Gently roll the wadded cloth onto the surface in a random fashion, creating uneven “drifts” over the entire surface. Step back occasionally and make sure you aren’t unconsciously creating patterns or forms that look like worms or circles.

Soften blotches. Using the three-inch paintbrush, lightly pass the bristles over the white to soften the effect. If you want to add other colors, now’s the time. Let the colors drift into one another, but don’t mix them.

Repeat process with the darker tan glaze.

Apply veins. This is the fun part! Using your feather or artist’s liner brush, dip it into the tan glaze or thinned artists’ paints and apply a series of squiggly lines that come together and then flare apart. Leaving your wrist loose, hold the feather or brush as lightly as possible. Let it flop around, creating a wonderfully chaotic line. Note how veins run in real marble: generally from one side to another, in a nervous, fidgety line, not in a criss-cross grid pattern. Follow along the sides of your drifts of color.

Soften. Using the dry three-inch paintbrush, lightly brush over wet veins in both directions, allowing the wet paint to smudge and drift.

Revein. Now go back in and pick out some strong veins where you will reapply paint. Marble usually has faint, deep veins, and a few that are obvious and close to the surface. Pick these out. Use the cotton swabs to push from under and over the veins, thinning them in some areas, while allowing for girth in others. Add splotches of strong white veins in some areas.

Vein with mineral spirits. Wetting an artist’s liner brush in mineral spirits, run along some sections of the drying paint to “open” areas. As you apply the solvent, the paint will pull away, allowing the base paint to show.

Protective finish. The surface does not need to be sealed unless it requires extra protection, as on the floor or in the bathroom, or if you wish for a high-gloss polish. Note that light, white or cream marbles will “yellow” if you apply an oil or mineral-based varnish; use a water-soluble one instead. Amber shellac can also be used over surfaces where a mellowing amber is an advantage, such as golden marbles. A “honed” look can be accomplished by adding a little chalky white paint to a matte sealer before application.

Don’t feel constricted to mimicking real stone. Paint offers limitless possibilities—that’s the fun of it! Try outlandish color combinations; sprinkle gold or silver metallic powders into topcoats; drift in little flakes of metallic gilding papers.

Cut a potato into crescents and uneven round shapes. Press these into glaze or draw with their edges to create “shells” as found in fossil stones.

Be sure to stay random! This is the hardest thing for beginning faux finishers, who create unconscious patterns in their painted finishes. Step back from your work often and assess it from a distance.

Feel free to add more and more layers of glaze and veining— this will increase the rich, deep sense of stone.

Let veins and drifts of color run off the visible plane—don’t end everything at the corner of the wall or side of the panel. Make it look as though the marble was cut from a larger piece of stone.

In vast areas such as entire walls, apply an overall glaze and use newspaper or bunched-up plastic bags to create a less detailed marbleized texture.