How to quickly give a professional finish?(part 3 of 4) Highlight & shadow
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time for my third installment in this 4 part series ...
This technique is exremely useful to give depth and reality to finished pieces which
the originals have either etched or raised surface features.

Highlight & shadow for stone, woodgrains, grasses, and mosses are just some of
the places you will use this faux finish technique. It will work marvels on pieces with etched or raised details like feather, rope bumped or faded rounded areas.

It's so easy I don't even want to give it away. Because it works on the same
concept of the real world and it's so simple.

In a real world environment, there is essentially a light source and it comes from a direction. So things which are down are such as creases, crevices in folds are in darkness. Meanwhile the high points like the side facing the light or the top of a woodgrain are light. All this technique does is highlight this fact and take it over the top.

Please note this technique must be done on a surface with 3d-detail only.

For this technique you will need 2 cans of spray paint, a dark one for the recesses and a lighter one for the peaks.

Unless your confining the techique to part of the piece you will not need to tape off any thing.
It is a simple 2 step process:

Step 1) Spray your item with your the darker paint from about 6 inches away, if your item has alot of crevices I would suggest turning it upside down for this coat so you do not miss undersides. Let it dry.


Step 2) This where you use the lighter paint to highlight. But the key here is not to directly straight onto the piece you want to spray an offset angle shooting out from the piece and rotate it. This will allow the crevices not to be hit with the lighter color. It's that simple. If you mess up just reapply the darker color let dry and do again.


Here is a sample of the effect on a mexican vase.