Painting Techniques, Ragging

One of the most elegant and understated of all methods in painting is the ragging technique, which creates subtle effects that make the room stand out.

The technique of ragging paint off or ragging on, isn’t at all difficult to do and creates a rather, broken color effect that works well for creating country style decorating, old world decorating and has made some of my French country rooms just stand up and out..

To Rag you are going to use a thinner paint or a glaze, on top of a base coat of pain, then, using paper towels or sometimes plastic trash bags to get a different texture, your going to rag some of the paint back off the wall while its all still wet, which will give you thath textured, dual tone effect that works so well in living rooms and dining areas.

If you change the pressure that you use when you are ragging paint off or on, and how hard you press on the paper towels, you’re also going to make small variations in the patterns that appear when the paint is applied or removed.

As with anything else, the colors that you choose are going to make the effect look quite different as well.
I used a lighter blue and white top coat on one room, and for the second, used a tan, medium, and then Ralph Laurens “Drawbridge Brown” for the top coat.
The results were absolutely striking in my hall, which I was attempting to make into a medieval, celtic type room. It worked miracles in a drab white hall. Particularly when I’d finished and using a gold leaf paint, stenciled a border of celtic knots on it using a stencil I purchased from The Stencil Library Those guys have EVERYTHING you can imagine in the stencil category.

Two different colors of blue, as you see here, when raggged over top of a white base will create a cool feeling, like a cloudy september day.

Half the fun in doing something like this is experimenting to begin with.
I take a couple sheets of poster board, draw in room walls about a foot by a foot, and then paint them, and rag them off or on to test what the overall effect is going to be using samples of the paint which most companies will give you, or you can purchase for about a half pound cost.

You do want to make sure that you use alkyd paints, because they are far more translucent than the latex, being more dense and sometimes too rapid in the dry time.

If you do, as I did, select to use latex, then you will want to thin it down, particulary the better quality paint such as the Ralph Lauren paints that I used.

Here’s what you’re going to need to Rag your walls.

Alkyd or latex primer
Low lustre enamel paint for the ragging
Low lustre paint for the base
2 3 inch paint brushes
4 or 5 rolls of paper towels
1 gallon odorless mineral spirits
2 large containers for paint mixing
Plastic sheeting
Masking tape.

DIRECTIONS:
make sure that you plastic your floors as the thinner paint tends to sprinkle more readily.
Mask off the woodwork and keep the area well ventilated.

Cover your wall with one coat or the base color and let it dry, then do a second coat if necessary.
Using a separate container, dilute the ragging colors with mineral spirits,(or with water if its latex) mixing well until it is something along the lines of heavy cream. consistency

Work in a 3 ft x3 ft area and I think you will get better results.. Start at the top and put on your ragging colors with brushes, alternating and overlapping the colors that you selected.
Use short strokes and do it randomly. don’t worry if it looks messy.. I was aghast when I first saw it but thats the way its going to look.l .Cross my heart it won’t stay like that,.
Working faster now, while the paint is wet, wad up your paper towels and press into the paint, so that you make the base color show through it.

REWAD your paper towels very frequently because the paint will start to build up on them and make them not work so well.. when they are completely wet with paint, toss them and start again..Honestly the sections you finish are going to look fairly consistent..

Repeat the steps until all the walls are completed.
Tips:
Bribe a friend to help you.. it will go faster and you won’t have to worry so much about the paint drying before you rag it off.