A chance meeting at FLIBS’ pretty awful food court a few years ago brought faux painting to my attention. I met there Anne Renaud (sorry, I know fox in French is renard, but Renaud is close and at TYRG we love our headline puns) who is a master of faux painting. We discussed the idea then of an article on what this can bring to a build. Recently she sent us this case study on how this technique can camouflage the mundane and elevate it to convincingly imitate the luxurious. Anne also explains specifically what faux painting did for Trinity build T-039.

MID-MAY, A SUNNY DAY: M/Y T-039 IS ALMOST ready to launch, and the owner is touring his newly built yacht for the very fi rst time. The designer, Patrick Knowles, knows what to expect: this ship is a showcase for the most precise hand-painted reproductions of each exquisite fi nish onboard. Every fire door, switch plate, electrical outlet and touchpad has been painted to blend in seamlessly with its field of wood, stone, silk and even embossed leather.

Almost all purely functional elements that could not be concealed were instead to be taken out of sight by means of paint – the resulting artwork thus becoming one of the ship’s unique features. On T-039, however, the trick was not only to paint the surfaces to look like their background of wood or stone, but to achieve precise continuity, so as to make each piece of exposed metal virtually disappear.

Simply carving a switchplate out of the same wood as the bulkhead could not, surprisingly, have produced the same effect of unbroken movement; even using the section that was cut out to accommodate the switchplate itself couldn’t have either, since the piece is too small to overlap the cut-out.

All these elements were base coated off-site, using low-VOC primer and acrylics. The fi nal detail work was done in successive layers of inks and sealer. That sealer was developed for me by a chemist friend who understood it had to have perfect translucency, so as to help recreate the extraordinary life and depth of each exotic wood and fine finish.

When each piece was done, it received a water-based protective varnish whose sheen was calibrated to match the reflective quality of each particular finish. Thus the silks, woods and leathers received a soft satiny sheen, whereas the marbles and granites got a sharp reflective gloss.

In the first phase, I visited the yard as soon as the bulkhead panels, cabinetry and stonework were put in, so I could photograph the surfaces that were to receive switchplates or control panels. This meant also photographing a greyscale board on every surface, so that when the photos were printed, the lab technician could compare these prints next to the grayscale board I had used, to adjust the colour print. The photos were then printed to scale, so that when I received the panels and switchplates, I could simply place them onto
the photograph and paint the bulk of what was missing. Thus an appreciable portion of the work could be done off-site.

The next phase was to install each plate and paint in the details, so that the wood grain or patterns which appeared at its edges found themselves faithfully continued within its surface. To do this, a careful examination of the surrounding fi eld of wood or stone was necessary, so as to avoid offending the eye with dissonant
patterning or inaccurate colour.

This job demanded profi ciency in recreating a great number of finishes, from the stunningly spirited zircote of the pilothouse, to the poetic flow of koa throughout the main foyer, the satiny moiré of anigre in the guest staterooms, and the deep, exquisite Santos rosewood of the owner’s offi ce, each of which presented
a different challenge in observation and execution.

I invited Bruce Thalman to collaborate on this project. Bruce is also an artist well-versed in the reproduction of materials found in nature. However, he is accustomed to working on a much larger scale; entire walls and doors. He commented: “Here, you can’t just do woodgraining and call it Cuban mahogany. There is no
room for improvisation or editing: the real mahogany is right there underneath, the sheet of veneer meticulously hand-selected, and your hand can’t lie about scale or colour or movement. You have to put in every little speck, every little detail, be incredibly faithful to the wood, in an almost photographic language. It’s maddening,
but it has refreshed my approach to the art of reproducing things. For me, it has meant shifting my vision from metres to millimetres.”

Such was the standard to attain on T-039. Even the dogs on the starboard watertight door were painted to match the door’s interior wood trim, which allied their functional duty to a deliberately aesthetic presence. In the galley, the touchpad frame, freezer control panel and electrical outlet and light switch covers came in aluminium or steel, but each now looks as though it was carved out of the slab of stone behind in precise and
faithful detail. This spectacular finish was, in fact, the easiest to accomplish on this project. Granite is simple in structure: only three layers of colour in the right movement, and one layer closer to a veining, were necessary to achieve perfect blending-in.

Yacht work demands not only the highest aesthetic standards but it also includes an important technical mandate as well: on T-039, the right decisions had to be made with regard to matching painting methods to the nature of the various substrates in play, as well as to their usage and whether they needed to meet any specifi c safety or fire-rating norms. Parts made of steel, Sintra board and aluminium have particular rates of fl ex depending on their dimensions, as well as different rates of porosity and expansion/contraction. Furthermore, factors such as the treatments they may have previously received, and their future exposure to stresses like possible impact or constant handling and cleaning, are all factors that must be considered in order to choose surface preparation, painting and sealing methods. All are critical in bringing the painted elements to their intended appearance, assuring their longevity, and producing the wow factor sought by superyacht
owners.
Anne Renaud

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