What is Trompe L'Oeil?
Is what is know as, 'tricking the eye', most of us have seen examples of this paint effect but its name is often escapes us. What trompe l'oeil does is create an optical illusion which makes you look at something and ask, 'Is it real or not?' For example if you have a cupboard in you child's room you could paint it to resemble a gingerbread house like in Hansel and Gretel, the woodland would then flow into the walls to the sides giving a 3D effect. Or the cot could in fact be, 'inside', a fairy castle, with stone, 'windows', painted on the walls overlooking battlements giving the illusion that the, 'windows' over look a view which isn't actually there. You could even go so far as to have say a friendly dragon looking, 'into', the room from the outside.
Achieving a result
Trompe L'Oeil is all about scale and perspective, it's also about practice, I won't go into the paint techniques in too much detail on this page, but I would strongly recommend that before starting this as a very ambitious project you arm yourself with some books on the subject, I recommend Roberta Gordon-Smith's book Trompe L'Oeil. Follow the link to Amazon.co.uk from this site
Of course you can use the technique to create small design which will be much easier and incorporate it into another theme, for example colour washing and then painting a design on a door.
Colourwashing is achieved by using a watered down paint, the texture will depend on how much water you add, over a pale base coat, the paint is applied using a Scrim (mutton cloth) using a circular hand motion over the area you wish to fill. Then paint in, 'shelves', on which you can place whatever you like i.e. a doll or a train set. From a distance this will give the illusion that the door is in fact a bookshelf. This will however involve free hand drawing but you can get templates of the objects you would like to use and project them onto the door -Transferring the Design- then fill in the colour.Accessories Store
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