Tartan Brush Roller enables a large surface like a wall to be painted as the famous plaid of choice with a few careful passes horizontally and vertically.

The brush consists of a series of rollers of varying sizes and spacings that are all located on a shared central spindle. Some of these are tiny to produce thin lines; others are made of rubber to hold the necessary detail of an angled pattern. (see tartan pics) The paint itself is stored in a sealed container that's supplied custom filled according the particular tartan the customer has ordered.

Various colours of paint are fed from the container via individual tubes to the inside of each roller, and begin delivering to the surface as the roller is dragged across the wall surface.

With everything in place, the painter carefully makes continuous passes of the roller across the wall of choice, making sure that this journey is parallel to the floor. This action may be repeated to ensure richness and depth of colour. A series of similar passes prepares the wall for the vertical equivalent strokes to begin once the horizontals have dried.

Mad chaotic effects are also possible by ordering two different tartan mixes, or running the roller over the wall using angled strokes instead of in parallel directions.
-- xenzag, Nov 13 2019

Tartan https://www.lochcar...ight-tartan-fabric/
once example of thousands of permutations possible [xenzag, Nov 13 2019]

Tartan painted stoneware mugs https://www.anta.co.uk/stoneware/mugs
This is vairly close to the idea proposed, with translucent glazes applied in two perpendicular passes. You can see how the orthogonal translucent strips combine when they cross. [pocmloc, Nov 14 2019]

The only problem I can see with this is that, if it worked, you'd end up with tartan walls.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 13 2019


You could always choose the "10 varieties of white" version.
-- xenzag, Nov 13 2019


Will there be a "Mondrian" version ? That would be acceptable; otherwise, what [MB] said.
-- 8th of 7, Nov 13 2019


A tasteful suggestion, but try to remember this is the halfbakery and good taste is seldom my objective. Tartan is very popular with hipsters, so get with the groove daddy-o.
-- xenzag, Nov 13 2019


I'm not sure that "horizontals then verticals" will work. You might be better with segmented rollers (so it "misses" for a part of each turn); but that would be quite complicating...
-- neutrinos_shadow, Nov 13 2019


If you applied polarized paint, and viewed the wall through suitable glasses, then one eye would see the vertical stripes while the other saw the horizontal ones. There's an obvious advantage in this arrangement.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 13 2019


Yes, if you close your eyes you don't see it at all

// good taste is seldom my objective. //

Astonishing - we nearly have something in common. Good taste is never our objective.
-- 8th of 7, Nov 13 2019


//plaid of choice// plaid is a kind of fabric, or blanket. Tartan is a kind of checked pattern.

I think that roller-painting tartan is potentially possible. Roller-painting plaid is not.
-- pocmloc, Nov 13 2019


Lots of things are "potentially possible", like transatlantic coracle racing; that doesn't mean they're a good idea (unless it's Tusk vs. Barnier, in which case we'll be cheering at the start line).
-- 8th of 7, Nov 13 2019


Since when was the halfbakery about 'good' ideas? For me the halfbakery was always about generating ideas that sounded sort of credible but were actually not, as otherwise they wouldn't by definition be halfbaked. This is why I tried to think of device that would produce tartan patterns on walls.... I've passed the 1,300 ideas mark here. So I might be saying I'm resting my synapses to concentrate on other aspects of my practice. Who knows.
-- xenzag, Nov 13 2019


The checked pattern of tartan is produced by the spot combination of warp and weft colours. If you have only two colours (e.g. white and black) then your tartan check will contain three different shades (white, black and grey): (white + white) = white, (black + black) = black, (white + black) = grey, (black + white) = grey.

Obviously most tartans have more than two colours but they combine in the same way, and can be shown as a simple grid, for example three paint colours gives six tartan colours, and four paint colours gives ten different colours in the tartan.

I was wondering if you could specify a translucent paint, but I am not sure how well this would work. Suppose you start with a white ground, and then roll on the black stripes at 50% transparency, so they all show as grey. Then roll on the vertical black stripes at 50% transparency. Will the intersections where both rollers have deposited black paint, show as black? Or as 70.7% grey? It would be better for muted colours.

Actual tartan fabric is made with a twill weave, which gives the effect of diagonally-interlocking rectangular pixels of pure colour which combine adjacently to give the illusion of the intermediate colours in the intersections of the differently coloured lines. But for tartan paint I think it is commonly acceptable for the colours to be solid and not pixellated, probably because correct registering of the tiny pixels is very difficult. I suppose it should be possible to do a correctly pixellated pattern by using opaque paint, and having the first roller paint block lines, and the second roller paint a 50% pixellated pattern.
-- pocmloc, Nov 14 2019



random, halfbakery