Faux Finish Stones...by Art Effects

Faux finishing techniques are used to
create trompe l'oeil stones.

"We Put The Trick, In The Trompe Of Trompe L'Oeil"

How To Paint Faux Stones

Follow the thumbnails below to see a step by step process of painting faux stones. We get many request for faux stone walls. This commission was in an arched pass-thru, a pantry door became a mural of a wine cellar.
We suggested a partial break away or something similar for
a unique trompe l'oeil effect. You can get a closed in feeling by covering the whole wall with faux stones, by breaking the stones up with a sky or plaster break away you can add depth, and a whole other deminsion to your
art effect. The more layers you create in your artwork, the bigger the impact your trompe l'oeil effect will have.

Click on a thumbnail for a larger view.

The first step in your Faux Stone is to base coat the wall with a color wash or a broken color faux finish.
We've tried many colors for our stones,
but usually end up making them brown or tan.
One hint in base coating your stones...think about stones, their most common characteristic is they are heavy or at least look heavy. So paint your stones "heavy", I think by this I mean solid, light and airy just isn't a stone. After base coating lay out your grout lines/mortor joints. Once your joints are in place, go back and add details to your stones. This can be done any fashion you like...with a rag, sponge or brush. Think af each stone as an individual peice of art.

For a more realistic effect don't be afraid
of black or a deep dark brown. Black really makes your artwork pop.

Here we use an airbrush, only because it speeds the process up a bit. You can the same effect with a little more time and a paint brush. A hint here is to use a of ripped (not cut) cardboard as a shield or guard to create a natural looking stone edge.

The next step can be easily accomplished by using a dish washing sponge. Figure out your light source and highlight with a white or cream color paint the top edge of the stones and the side where the light will hit. If you feel the need to highlight a little more you can with a small paintbrush, hit the edges here and there with little tickle lines.

For a little extra touch and another way of adding to our effect, we added green algae growing in the mortor joints. This also breaks up the darkness of the joints. A sea sponge is the easiest way to create this green growth. Base coat with black, then a dark green, then highlight with a light green or yellow.
Remember algae is bright and limey in color.
Once again the black base coat will make this growth "pop".
Don't forget to go back and paint the edges of the stones that are broke around your sky if you chose to have a break away.
Since we always try to go the extra distance to add more effects to our projects, we created the plaster break away with an actual texture using joint compound. See our Wall Textures for details

Then there are the extra details requested by the customer, like this angel peering over the wall.

To complete a wine cellar, the pantry door became a mural, you could just walk into the cellar. With wine barrels, a bottle and glass, grapes for color, and a hungry little mouse.