Painting with water-based paints on raw plaster: instruction

Gusevsky Andrey Anatolyevich

DIY plaster painting

Drawings on raw plaster are made outside the building and indoors. This is practically an art that not everyone can master and do with their own hands. How drawings are applied, the subtleties of the process will tell the article.

Features of painting on plaster

Water-based painting on wet stucco is called a mural. When creating murals earlier, artists used paints with the addition of glue or casein, which significantly increased their shelf life.

Features of creating frescoes are:

• The paint is absorbed by the layer of plaster, and the brush should easily slide on this plaster.
• Rolling paint or leaving streaks indicates an already dried plaster that has stopped absorbing paint, which will create a mural.
• This “defective” part of the wall must be removed and a new plaster coat applied.
• Work can be continued.

Plaster painting is often used for decorating rooms.

The advantages of art painting are:

• The composition created on the wall becomes unique and one of a kind.
• She can decorate the walls with completely different compositions, it can be:

1. simple ornaments;
2. complex landscape panels.

• The drawings on the walls emphasize any interior space.

The biggest disadvantage of wall painting on stucco is the need for a person to have artistic talent.

In addition to the disadvantages of the coating include:

• Drawing on raw plaster is difficult to apply on your own.
• You need to be able to draw.
• The price of work with the involvement of specialists can be quite large.
• It is necessary that the speed of work is high.
• We need careful preparation of surfaces for painting.

Raw plaster painting with water colors

Stucco painting has the following features when performing work:

• Painted stucco for damp rooms is a complex and very lengthy process that requires monitoring by an invited specialist.

Tip: Before applying the image to the wall, you should draw a sketch on it with the contours of the desired pattern, and then water-soluble paints are applied with brushes

• The sketching on the wall begins with the outline of the sections with the presence of dark colors on them.
• The technique of painting on raw plaster requires a sufficiently moist base. You can determine this in this way: when stains appear on the surface after the brush, this place of the plaster is cleaned with a spatula and again covered with a new composition.

• The peculiar absorption of the paint pigment with lime or any other components of the plaster allows you to acquire a characteristic depth after drying the painting.

Tip: If you want to do the mural yourself, but there is doubt to make the painting efficiently and quickly enough, you need to try your hand at a small area of ​​wet plaster or on a dry surface.

How to prepare walls for painting

Any finishing work begins with a quality foundation preparation.

The table shows the main stages of this process:

How to prepare a solution

The secret of fresco masters is to prepare a solution for plastering surfaces. Performing painting on the walls, plaster, or rather the proportions of its components are selected independently, there is no universal option: different compositions of mixtures have their pros and cons.

However, some proven practice recommendations exist.

They can be used:

• The basis of the mortar for plaster is lime (see We prepare ourselves a mortar for lime plaster) With the improvement of its quality, the strength of the material increases, the better the paint will lie on it. Acquired as clean and fresh building lime, regardless of its value.
• Lime is quenched with clean water and left for about 15 days, which will significantly improve its properties.
• Coarse sand or a mixture of it with brick chips is added, which is preferable, which will serve as a filler.

Tip: When applying frescoes on the street, sand is able to provide it with the necessary margin of safety. In this case, the amount of brick chips in the mixture should be reduced to a minimum.

• Hemp, previously finely chopped, or cellulose fiber is added, which increases the elasticity of the composition and protects it from cracking in the mixture.

Plastering the wall

The composition is prepared right before the start of plastering, and then painting.

Approximate proportions of the mixture:

• Base layer:

1. one piece of lime dough;
2. three parts filler.

• Front layer:

1. one piece of lime dough;
2. 2.2 parts filler.

• If it is necessary to apply a composition of more than two layers, a greasy solution is taken for the face coating, in it the ratio of components is 1: 1.8.

How to apply plaster

The instructions for painting on raw plaster are called differently.

fresco painting, involves the following sequence of operations:

• The prepared surface is moistened, at least 24 hours before the start of work.
• Moistening is repeated 90 minutes before the plastering process begins.

Application of the first coat of plaster

• The first layer is poured onto the surface up to eight millimeters thick. The mortar is evenly distributed on the wall with a plaster grater without unnecessary smoothing.
• Wavy lines are drawn up to two millimeters deep in increments of up to 40 millimeters. These furrows will form a relief that will ensure maximum adhesion of the stucco layers.
• The first layer is dried for at least 12 days.
• The surface is moistened until it is completely saturated with liquid.
• A second layer is applied, which will be intermediate.

Tip: The second layer is not necessary, but beginners should not rush: two-layer murals are very sensitive to technology violations.

• If a whitish coating appears on the surfaces of the base layers, it must be cleaned and the wall re-moistened. Otherwise, the adhesion of the plaster base is disrupted, which will eventually lead to delamination of the fresco.
• After all the preliminary layers of plaster have dried, the latter is moistened and a facial solution is applied. Due to the rapid drying, it should be laid in small sections, while painting on the wall in parallel.

Some nuances of wall painting

In advance you need to prepare everything you need to paint the wall:

• Thumbnail image.
• Water based acrylic paints.
• Tools.

The work is performed in the following sequence:

• After leveling the plaster, with the help of a needle, the contours from the sketch “spill over” to the base. The main lines are best marked with a sharp tip of a pencil or an awl, as in the photo.

Drawing the image on the wall

• Soft wide brushes are applied with water-diluted paints, following a certain sequence:

1. light shades are stacked;
2. midtones;
3. dark colors.

• Smears are applied with light movements, so that the brush does not “clean” the drying lime composition from the wall. If whitish streaks appear in the paint, the brush must be thoroughly washed and the pressure on the tool should be reduced during operation.
• The drawing is repeated, but in reverse order:

1. dark paint is applied;
2. medium colors;
3. light shades.

This will create smooth transitions between the shades. And in areas where light paint has already been absorbed into the base, it will be possible to repeat the highlighting, which will make the picture more contrast.

• At the end of the plot painting, the edges that are not filled with plaster are carefully cut with a spatula and a knife to form an external bevel, on which the gypsum mortar is again applied and smoothed until the seam disappears.
• Painting operations are repeated again.

The most difficult is the final stage of the work: we can’t touch the mural for about 10 days. This is due to the fact that when the plaster dries, the absorption of paint occurs unevenly, which can unpredictably change the shades of the image.

Tip: Before the plaster dries completely, the room should be protected from drafts and temperature extremes.

Drawing on wet plaster

To apply paint on raw plaster with paints is a rather complicated technique; not every artist can master it at the proper level.

But with a great desire and the presence of artistic taste, you can try, and the video in this article and some recommendations will help in the early stages.