We are shooting in a studio and I was wondering different ways on how to create walls like this : http://imgur.com/Rnovf : on flats? We are going for the worn out industrial distopia / post apocalyptic look.
Worn out concrete walls
- Thread starter leaftors
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Michael Carter
Veteran
Drywall mud can be really useful on flats, drywall, even stretched canvas. Use the dry mix in a bag, the "20 minute" stuff (which can still take hours to dry - point a 1k light or work lights at it to speed up the dry). A heat gun will make it dry so fast it shrinks and cracks - can be really cool. It gets too stiff to work with very quickly, so use cool water (even ice-cold water) and make as little as you can work with at a time. Once it thickens, water won't thin it out (it's portland-based - it's curing, not drying). I use a big-ass kitchen whisk to mix it.
You can stretch canvas or burlap, trowel the mud on it, and after it dries, roll it, crack it, etc, and then re-stretch it on a flat. Super-distressed. You can make thinned (watery) drywall mud and dip newsprint or thin paper in it, and rip up chunks of the wet paper and spread it on flats with a wide drywall trowel. When dry, use paint to match the distressing you want.
Troweling - using a wide drywall trowel - is often the best way to apply textures. It gives you flat planes of texture with a lot of depth.
Foam insulation panels are cheap and lightweight - and when you peel the paper off, look a lot like cast concrete (they're cast foam). But they're yellow and need paint. Get a latex friendly spray gun (cheap) and use thinned, dark latex flat for a base coat. Needs a day to dry since it pools in the holes. Then hot glue to frames and paint to the style you want. Thinned latex in a spray bottle makes nice runs and water stains. You pretty much always want flat paint on foam - but semi-gloss on drywall as a base lets you add layers of paint nicely without soaking in. Nice for your living room, but you need to roughen it for shooting.
The main thing is to look at reference and figure out "why does it look this way"? If you blow out your reference shot in photoshop, you'll see the conduit on the walls looks gross - that's decades of layers of paint. So mix paint with drywall mud powder. The wall texture is thick layers of paint that have chipped and peeled - how do you fake that? Think "layers" over time. Torn up hunks of newsprint can fake this - paint the wall dark and lay on slightly lighter layers that look like big "chips". Let 'em curl and peel a bit, the paint will dry and glue 'em on.
The devil's in the details with this kind of work. And make sure any piece getting a close up gets a lot of love.
People make a good living faking old textures for nice homes - or for movie sets. It's an art and takes practice...
You can stretch canvas or burlap, trowel the mud on it, and after it dries, roll it, crack it, etc, and then re-stretch it on a flat. Super-distressed. You can make thinned (watery) drywall mud and dip newsprint or thin paper in it, and rip up chunks of the wet paper and spread it on flats with a wide drywall trowel. When dry, use paint to match the distressing you want.
Troweling - using a wide drywall trowel - is often the best way to apply textures. It gives you flat planes of texture with a lot of depth.
Foam insulation panels are cheap and lightweight - and when you peel the paper off, look a lot like cast concrete (they're cast foam). But they're yellow and need paint. Get a latex friendly spray gun (cheap) and use thinned, dark latex flat for a base coat. Needs a day to dry since it pools in the holes. Then hot glue to frames and paint to the style you want. Thinned latex in a spray bottle makes nice runs and water stains. You pretty much always want flat paint on foam - but semi-gloss on drywall as a base lets you add layers of paint nicely without soaking in. Nice for your living room, but you need to roughen it for shooting.
The main thing is to look at reference and figure out "why does it look this way"? If you blow out your reference shot in photoshop, you'll see the conduit on the walls looks gross - that's decades of layers of paint. So mix paint with drywall mud powder. The wall texture is thick layers of paint that have chipped and peeled - how do you fake that? Think "layers" over time. Torn up hunks of newsprint can fake this - paint the wall dark and lay on slightly lighter layers that look like big "chips". Let 'em curl and peel a bit, the paint will dry and glue 'em on.
The devil's in the details with this kind of work. And make sure any piece getting a close up gets a lot of love.
People make a good living faking old textures for nice homes - or for movie sets. It's an art and takes practice...