Hi everyone, today I would like to show you my very last step by step acrylic pouring project, this time using The Crafter’s Workshop Heavy Body Acrylic Paints. No more acrylic pouring after this one, it just takes too much plastic and paint to create these kind of projects!
Last year I did an acrylic pouring project with some warm toned paints and I used silicone oil as well in my mixture and I was wondering what my project would look like without the silicone oil.
Let’s start with what acrylic pouring really is:
It is a form of painting where you mix your paints with a medium that thins them and allows them to flow, then you pour the paint mixture onto your canvas. You never know what result you’ll get!
Before I will start giving you some tips for when you would like to try this form of painting let me say that the recipe for your mixture is very important, mine isn’t holy, every painter seems to have a different one and each paint brand and/or medium can mean a different mixture (or even the humidity where you live, the season of the year and so on)!
That being said, these are the tips that I gathered, after many hours of research, you can use them as your basic guidelines and adjust them with your own experiences:
1. Today’s project is a 20x20 cm canvas. Spray the back of the canvas with water, let it sit for a short while and then dry with a heat tool or hair dryer (this will tighten the canvas fabric). Cover your work surface in plastic because pouring is a messy business and wear old clothes;
2. Tape the edges of the canvas on the back of the canvas with painters tape. Put push-pins on the back (on all four corners, so the canvas itself is not resting on the table) and make sure the canvas is level. If you don’t tape the edges of the canvas on the back the paint will make the canvas sag and when the paint dries afterwards it’s really hard to correct this;
3. First I gessoed the canvas using The Crafter’s Workshop “White Gesso”. If you like paint the edges of the canvas (when you are using a dark contrasting colour (this way you don’t have any bare patches on the sides). I didn’t do this on today’s project since I’m working with a white negative space;
4. Mix the pouring medium (there are a few different ones) with the paint (I did this by weight): I used 2 parts Floetrol (50 grams) to one part paint (The Crafter’s Workshop Heavy Body Acrylic Paint : 25 grams)), stir well in a plastic cup, avoid creating more bubbles then necessarily (don’t mix like you’re clutching eggs). You can use a pop-sickle stick for stirring. I always like to add one metallic paint to my project.
Most important is to keep in mind that the consistency you are after should be like warm honey!
Add a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol (couple of drops) to the mixture (this may help prevent bubbles) and stir.
Then add (boiled and cooled down) water, in little bits at a time, until you have reached the consistency of warm honey (you can check this by letting the mixture pour of your stick into the cup). Let it sit for about a half hour / an hour (so that the pouring medium and the paint can get to know each other). For this I choose to use plastic cups with a lid.
Normally I would add silicone oil at this stage, but not today. Silicone oil will create the so called “cells” (the circular shapes that you see in many acrylic pours). Floetrol itself creates some cells on it’s own and I was wondering what they would look like. Silicone oil added to Floetrol will create even more cells, like we saw in last years project. If you use a different pouring medium then Floetrol then it’s hard to achieve cells without the silicone oil. So, when you don’t like the cells then you now know what leave out of your mixture!
For today’s project I chose the following paint colours : “Spun Sugar”, “Grape Jelly”, “Blueberry Pie”, “Kale Smoothie” and “Iridescent Silver”. For the greenish colour I first mixed a bit of the Blueberry Pie with more of the Kale Smoothie and then added the Floetrol to create a bit brighter green. I mixed up twice as much of the white because I will use that colour for my negative space.
5. Time to put on your gloves! Check if your canvas is still level. Do the pouring! I love to do a dirty cup flip pour: use a size plastic cup according to the amount of paint, the cup should be almost full, pour different colours of paint in a cup, one after another (don’t stir!), until you think you have enough paint for the canvas you’re working on. Lift the canvas with one hand and put it on top of the cup with the paint. Hold it firm (canvas in your left, cup in your right hand)! Turn the canvas with the cup on top and put on your table. Let the cup sit for about a minute. Pour more white mixture around the cup and spread out using a palette knife or pop-sickle stick. Then puncture a hole in the top of the cup with a push pin. Air goes into the cup and will lift the cup, when not help a little, but be careful.
Now, the paint will probably not spread out as far as you would like it to go by itself, so you will have to tilt the canvas back and fort (the corners are hardest to cover, unless you have a circular canvas), you can use a circular motion if you like. If you are going after “cells” then don’t tilt the canvas too much, it will break the cells. Because I wanted some white negative space I didn’t have to cover the entire canvas with paint. When you are happy with how the paint covers the canvas as well as the edges, make sure that you always tip the paint back to the middle as your last step, without loosing your design, this will abort the ongoing flow towards one edge of the canvas (the one you tipped to lastly).
This is what the wet canvas looks like:
6. Check if all your edges/sides of the canvas are covered the way you want it, if not, you can use your finger or a pop-sickle stick to pick up the paint from your work surface and add to the sides of the canvas where you need it, in a dabbing motion (don’t rub, it will create muddy colours);
7. You can use a torch (like the ones you can buy for crème-brulle purposes, to pop the air bubbles. You can use your torch after the pouring and before the tipping, (that’s what I did today) or only at the end, or both, whatever you like, but make sure that you always have done this at the end so that as many bubbles as possible have popped!
8. Now you can use a toothpick of a pop-sickle stick to clean the underside edges of your canvas (while the canvas is standing on the table). Scrape of the paint that is hanging under the canvas so that it doesn’t dry this way. Be careful to not ruin your wonderful project!
9. Now the best thing you can do is to walk away and only check every now and then if you have any more overflowing paint that needs to be scraped on the underside of the canvas. Don’t touch the canvas on top, you will ruin it!
10. Let the canvas dry! Some say that two days is enough (after two days the top is dry enough to transport the canvas to a save place to dry further). I would advise to let it dry for at least a couple of weeks (on the save side, in winter, at least four weeks, in summer about three weeks, but not in the sun, the paints needs to dry slow and evenly to prevent cracks in the paint surface). If you seal the canvas to soon then the moisture will be trapped and it can create mould over time.
What I noticed with this particular paint colour mixture is that part of the canvas dried lots darker then the colours indicated when they we still wet. This might have happened if a darker purple layer was underneath the green that you see on top.
This is part of the acrylic pouring process, you never know what will happen during a project or how it turns out in the end!
11. After drying, and when you have used silicone oil, you will first have to remove this as best as you can (it will sit on top of the canvas). Since I didn’t use silicone oil on today’s project I don’t have to worry about this aspect now!
12. Time to varnish/seal the canvas: you can choose between many options such as resin, epoxy, regular varnish, whatever you prefer. Most will choose a gloss option though, but if you like matt, go for matt. I chose a regular gloss acrylic varnish, added two coats with a brush and my project is finished!
Some detail pictures:
I love how this canvas turned out!
I wish you a creative day!
