A Swedish-inspired painted sideboard - Part 3 - Painting a practice panel

A Swedish-inspired Painted Sideboard - Part 3 - Painting a Practice Panel

When your project involves painting a large piece of furniture, it's worth working on a practice panel first to avoid any costly mistakes.

Tips for Creating a Practice Panel

• First apply your colour wash, so that you are working on an accurate representation of your final piece. This is also an opportunity to work out how many layers of washes you need to achieve the colour you want.
• Test out how watered down you want your paint; I like watering it down quite a lot to achieve an antiqued effect but you may prefer a more solid colour.
• Check how all your colours are working together, especially how they look against the background wash.
• Now is also the time to practise the finer details you want to include in your piece that you may not have captured in the mock-up.

You Will Need:

• A surface to practice on - This could be an offcut of wood or Canvas MDF boards
• Chalk pencil
• A selection of the smaller paintbrushes
• Eggshell paint in a colours of your choice - As Eggshell paint is unavailable in tester pot size, you could buy the Emulsion tester pots and work with these first to see if you like the colours before committing to the full-size Eggshell pots for your final piece.
• Paint palette
• 3 x water jars filled with water
• Damp cloth