Art: Acrylic Pour paintings, round three

And we're back at it with the pour painting!

Man, I love doing this stuff! I've been so obsessed with it for ages and never realized just how easy it really was to do. A lot of the videos and tutorials I had read on creating the acrylic pour texture needed required expensive supplies you either order online or pick up from an art supply store and neither of those options was especially appealing or felt readily accessible to me. A small bottle of official acrylic pour medium starts at about $8, and is probably only good for a handful of paintings... now, don't get me wrong, the medium exists for a reason and it's made to interact positively with the paints and dry with a particular texture, so it's absolutely worth buying if you're extremely serious about your paintings. If you buy a large bottle (say a gallon or so) you get a better price by weight, but it's still far from what I'd call "cheap". And that's ok- it's a professional tool for professional painters, and though as an artist I could lament the cost of art supplies until the sun finally burns itself out, I understand the need for quality tools- and that quality often comes at a cost. 

But let's be real, guys. I'm an artist, and while I'm not outright starving (eating eggs on toast right now, actually, one of my favorite budget breakfasts), I'm not exactly loaded, either. I've gotta work within the confines of my quite constrictive budget. Since we're just now starting to experiment with this technique, it didn't seem practical to drop $50 on a gallon of paint-diluter when we also have to buy the paints and canvases with no guarantee on how well we'll like the results. It can be intimidating diving into new things. Believe you me, I get that. 

So for these, we opted for the dirty pour method. Instead of buying expensive pouring medium we opted for a gallon of simple old glue, which was about $10-11 at our local Wal-mart. Of course, since it's not a medium necessarily intended for these purposes the results may be a little off from what would be achieved using the much more expensive medium. We've been happy with our results, however, and to be fair we've been experimenting with using different silicone products in the process, too, so any textural weirdness could be attributed as much to that as the glue. Personally, I'm happy with how they've all turned out. You can judge for yourself after looking at the photos below~

Art: Acrylic pour paintings, first try

  

This was a first try for the both of us, so we were a bit nervous initially going into it but we ended up being quite thrilled with the results! We had been watching Youtube videos of various acrylic pour paintings over the months off and on, but after some research we learned of the dirty pour method which involves mixing several colours into a cup before releasing the paints onto the canvas and went with that. There are tons of different techniques and mediums available for achieving this sort of effect so it's really up to you and your imagination what you would do with it! We opted for a basic roygbiv color palette to start and mixed our acrylic paints with regular white glue to thin along with some water. Some painters will use a grease or lubricant (giggity) between layers of paint, or spritz them over the final painting, and this creates more bubbles and layering. It makes sense, if you think about it; acrylic mixes with water and oils and water do not mix, so using an oil-based substance to suspend the paints will create more texture and more bubbles of isolated colour that refuses to melt into the background. 

We, however, did not have any lubes (giggity) this time through, and instead went with just the modified paint. Mixing the paints with the glue and water was probably the most time consuming part, then finding places where we could safely pour the paint without spillage the next. It does take some time for the paintings to dry, though the actual time frame will vary depending on how thick the paints are on the canvas. We quickly learned that if you tilt the canvas too far, and the paints are too thin, much of your colour will go pouring over the side in no time at all! At the right viscosity, there's some more time to angle and adjust to ensure your canvas is covered and your colours have spread and created something you approve of. We only had Youtube videos to go from as far as the desired viscosity, but we were quite pleased with the results we had. Even though we used the same colours, each painting was completely different from the last! We're definitely excited to keep experimenting with this technique, and you can expect some more posts on the matter to come!