"Painting a drop-cloth..." Topic

I'm going to use a large canvas drop cloth to make a mat for my game table and want to paint it green overall. I don't know how it will take regular latex paint as opposed to spray paint. It's going to be large…6' by 10'…so I'm thinking of of using my Wagner sprayer to spray on the latex paint which would be much cheaper than lots of spray cans.

Anyone have some experience with this and can share any words of wisdom with me?

Thanks all!

that should work fine!
One of our local guys does large mats, hangs them from a clothes line I think (?)
Random colors with irregular shapes and fuzzy edges look great
(Obviously start with a base color mat that goes with your gaming theme)

You may want to dye the drop cloth tan first.

I did something similar with a tan felt cloth 10x6.

Just used three other colors – brown lightly, light green, and dark green.

On the reverse side I did a desert with lighter and darker tan and some white.

Used total of 6 cans of spray.

I paint canvas duck cloth all the time for making mats.

I use cheap craft acrylic paint, for the smaller mats I stretch it on a frame because it shrinks. Plus the frame lets it dry faster

For larger mats I do not bother with stretching, just lay it on top of a plastic drop cloth. it takes longer to dry.

I would think a Wagner sprayer would work fine.

Some pictures here:
link

When I made painted material stuff for reenacting, I just painted it with regular latex house paint.

Try not to use it during a snow storm… I had to do this for my game before Cold
Wars. Lol.

First I sponge on one or two of the base colors with a natural sponge
Then 2 or more spray coats using the Wagner paint sprayer. I find it makes for a nice effect and blends the sponge work. Use latex.

TRU

Use house paint. It will soak up paint like a sponge. Mine did:

link

Once dry lay it out in the drive way and hit it with some spray paint. A can of yellow, tan and second green should do the trick.

There are some ideas about groundcloths here in this old blog posting:

link

The only item I can add is be careful of the size. My table is 10 x 6 so I bought one that size at the national hardware chain. The actual size was only 9.5 x 5.5. Looking at the packaging it did say that I fine print. I returned it and bought the next size up and cut it down to 11 x 7. That gives me plenty of room to put elevation under the mat and still have it cover the table.

Many years ago, I spray painted a sheet with cans of Vauxhall Green, highlighted with Ford Yellow and speckled with British Leyland Bracken! It looked good until I left home and my dad started using it as a dust sheet…