6 Tips to Paint Like Mucha - Art Nouveau Speedpaint

So the first step is to deal with this veneer and I can see that it's solid wood underneath so I kind of want to just take off this veneer completely and see what's underneath it because I have a feeling it's gonna look nice but I'm not sure so I'm gonna take the chance and if it looks bad then I'll just have to put a new veneer on top. My go-to method for removing veneer in the past has always been to use a heat gun to melt the glue underneath the veneer and then use a putty knife to peel it off. That method's worked pretty well for me but there's a new method that I've been wanting to try and it's actually one that I've been suggested multiple times in the past by some of you guys in the comment section. I'm taking this damp towel and I'm gonna just lay it over the veneer and have it sit there for about four to six hours. What this should do is soak into the veneer and then activate the glue a little bit so that the veneer is easier to peel off. And then I'll use an iron to heat the surface up which should make the veneer peel off pretty easily except I immediately ran into a problem. That smoking that you see is from the shellac burning. For me to heat the veneer enough for it to peel off it meant that I would have to first burn off this entire layer of shellac which felt sketchy at best. So now I'm doing what I should have done in the first place which is to sand off that layer first. By removing the shellac topcoat the towel should also be able to soak into the veneer more directly and make this whole process more effective. Because this top used to have a veneer glued onto it you can see these darker dirty looking spots. That just meant that I had to sand a little deeper until I got the whole top looking uniform and free of any residue from the glue. That's one of the advantages of dealing with a solid wood top. You don't have to worry about sanding too deep like you would when dealing with a thin veneer. Of course you do still have to make sure you sand the entire surface evenly so that you're not leaving any pits in any one area. Because I took off the veneer there's a bit of a lip where the veneer used to meet this front trim so I'm just gonna sand that smooth. You might be wondering why I didn't just repair the damaged veneer instead of removing it completely. You might even think that this is cheating, an easy way out of a problem that would otherwise be solvable by someone more experienced. But here's something I can say from experience. When I list my pieces for sale on Facebook marketplace one of the most common messages I get aside from all the is this availables is is it solid wood. Nothing turns off a potential buyer more than hearing no it's veneer. Being able to write solid wood top in the listing just holds a lot of selling power and even justifies a higher price sometimes. So I could argue that my method is just me following what the market seems to want and it's just a convenient coincidence that it's also the easy way out. For these very detailed portions unfortunately there's no easy way to sand it aside from getting in there with a piece of sandpaper to do it by hand. Because of the way that this part is shaped I'm forced to sand up and down but the grain direction of this piece of wood runs sideways so because I'm sanding against the grain it's gonna leave some scratches. To get rid of them I'm using another piece of sandpaper with a higher grit to sand one last time in the direction of the grain. It is so rare for a piece to scrape off this easily. Easily the easiest piece I've ever scraped. This is just removing the shellac topcoat so I'll still have to remove the stain with a sander but this should make the sanding process a lot easier. I made these pegboard hooks using my new 3d printer from Bamboo Lab, the sponsor of this video. This is the A1 combo and it's the perfect gateway into the world of 3d printing. I've always thought 3d printing was really cool. The idea of being able to bring just about anything from your head into the real world is a wild concept to me but as cool as that is I thought it would be just as complicated and expensive to get into. Turns out it's not. With this setup I was printing things within the first hour of opening the box. After a little bit of basic beginner friendly assembly it basically handles the rest on its own. It automatically calibrates when you turn it on for the first time. It checks the bed level, compensates for vibration, and even has active noise cancellation which makes this thing so quiet. I don't mind having it running right next to my computer while I edit and it's actually quieter than my paper printer. One of my favorite parts of this setup is this AMS unit. It's the attachment that holds up to four spools of filament. This is what allows you to print multicolor objects. You just select which colors you want for specific components of a print and the machine takes care of the switching. And here's where it gets even cooler, the BambooLab mobile app. This has been one of my favorite parts of the whole experience. From the app you can remotely control your printer even if you're not home. You can adjust settings like print speed or fan control and check in on your print with a live camera feed from the built-in camera and get real-time updates on how your print is going. There's also this platform called Makerworld which is integrated into the app. It's basically a massive library of free print files uploaded by the 3D printing community. You can browse designs, download one that fits your project, and send it straight to your printer all from your phone. You can start a print job while you're out and come home to a completed print. So if you've ever been curious about 3D printing but thought it looked too complicated or overwhelming, I totally get it because I felt the exact same way. But this printer makes it extremely easy to get started. It's fast, quiet, smart, and honestly just a ton of fun to use. So if you want to check out the BambooLab A1 combo, I'll leave a link in the description. I'm filling these pits with some wood filler. I'm trying to use colors that match whatever area they're filling because that'll make the next step easier. For the dark knotted areas, I'm using a dark oak color, and for the surrounding lighter areas, I'm using the natural color. For this specific pit, my idea was to fill half of it with the darker filler and then fill the rest with a mix of natural antique wood fillers, which I thought would better match the color of the wood that surrounds that knot. I should have just used the dark filler for the entire thing though, because when it dried, the lighter color turned out to be way lighter than I wanted. Once the fillers are dry and sanded, I'm using water-based stains to make these spots look like they're natural knots in the wood. I just play around with the colors until I'm satisfied with how it looks. If I don't like it, it's always an option to sand away the stain and try again.