How Does Rag Rolling Work?
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What is rag rolling?
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Rag rolling is a faux painting technique that can be used to give the feeling of texture to a painted surface. The technique is called rag rolling because it involves using a twisted rag to apply or remove paint or glaze to a surface in an uneven, random pattern. A similar type of textural painting can be achieved via "ragging," which is dabbing paint on or off a surface with a bunched-up rag rather than rolling the rag. Rag rolling can produce an interesting and unique finish for a wall that can be easily painted over or filled in. Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of rag rolling is that it can easily be done by anyone, using household items.
The rag rolling process
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Like any paint job, rag rolling begins with preparing the surface to be painted by cleaning it thoroughly and repairing imperfections so the paint will stick. Next, the wall is coated--normally with whatever color is desired for the backdrop. When the background color is dry, a rag is rolled by twisting it as if to wring water out of it. Next, the rag is placed into a glaze to be applied, and excess glaze is wrung out of the rag. The painter then literally rolls the rag down the surface to be painted in a vertical direction, creating a path of painted and unpainted wall. The process is repeated in side-by-side swaths until the entire wall is complete.
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Rolling on versus rolling off
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Rag rolling is a fairly simple painting technique, and its textured result can be achieved in two different ways. In Section 2, the process described was rolling on--meaning paint is applied to the rag, which is then rolled onto a wall using the rag. Another method is rolling off. This is when you apply paint to a wall with a normal paint roller and then use a rag to roll down the fresh paint and absorb it, allowing the base coat to show through. Rolling on and rolling off will both produce similar textured effects, though rolling off will often display less of the base wall color than rolling on. Rolling off also usually requires more rags, because rags fully saturated with the paint must be discarded because they can no longer absorb paint to create the desired visual effect.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Image found in wikipedia commons database.
