Scenic Art for the Theatre, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

Creating Aging, Decorative, and Faux Finishes Using Multiple Mediums

This chapter addresses some of the newer techniques of scenic painting—called multimedium techniques— many of which have developed in the last century with the advent of new painting and finishing substances. Other techniques are only relatively new to theatre but have developed over the centuries, including faux finish techniques, aging and staining techniques, and some texturing effects. This chapter also discusses a wide range of unconventional paint products that scenic artists occasionally encounter.

We use the term multimedium because many contemporary faux techniques rely on mixing paint mediums to purposely contrast finishes or textures for more realistic ...