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Acrylic Pour
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Message
Posted
I've recently become quite intrigued by 'acrylic pour' and decided to have a go for myself. It appears to be very popular in the States but is slow to take off over here. Sadly most of the demos/tutorials on Youtube which I have looked at so far, and there are many of them, are by American ladies with high pitched voices who seem to be somewhat lacking in the ability to make good videos and in demonstrating. Anyway at least they served in helping me understand the basics.
The main ingredients are acrylic paint, Floetrol, Silicone oil, a heat gun (needed to encourage cells in the finished artwork), plastic cups and lollipop sticks to stir the mixtures. Floetrol is quite expensive as is the Liquitex equivalent so next time I might try it with PVA glue or similar and WD40 can be used instead of the oil but I've yet to try out these cheapskate alternatives.
I equipped myself with all these bits and pieces and managed to find time just before Christmas to have a trial run. I produced my first effort which turned out okayish but I made the mistake of following the general advice in the Youtube clips of using a large number of primary colours. As a result it was, to my taste, a tad too busy and garish.
Snooty purists may scoff at acrylic pour but I do love the excitement and unpredictability of it. I would agree that acrylic pour is mostly about skill in the techniques used rather than artistic ability. However I’m convinced there is room for increased artistic input to control the result (even though there is little evidence of this on the videos I’ve watched) and from what I have learnt so far I am confident that this can be developed with experience. Certainly I shall be looking into the choice of more muted colours from a restricted palette and the different ways used to encourage the flows to – err well – flow.
Anyway I showed my first work around over Christmas for the views of others and as a result, and much to my surprise, it was snapped up and now hangs in North London.
Luckily I’d already taken a photo of it which I've just posted in the gallery - the link is as follows:
https://www.painters-online.co.uk/gallery/michaeledwards/2019-michael-edwards-acrylics/394932/
I would be most interested to know what others think of my first attempt and also from anyone who has any experience of working with 'acrylic pour'. Any thoughts and tips will be appreciated.
Posted
Well there’s fun Michael. You have enjoyed yourself. Similar results can be had floating paint on water. Or, doing what I did on one memorable occasion mix paints with dilute washing up liquid ,sucking up through a straw then blowing out...I sucked and swallowed... not nice.
I could see this being used to be worked into.....
Posted
Very striking image, Michael. Yes it is a bit bright but so what. It put me in mind of the marbling that you used to find on on the stacked cut edges (if you see what I mean) of old, Victorian era books. That certainly suggests there is a lot of scope for artistic input to control the result.
Posted
During a summer period in my long ago youth, I worked with a painter and decorator and would often 'drip' gloss paint ( any colour but Magnolia ) and white spirit onto discarded pieces of hardboard and achieved similar results. My boss was ne'er too impressed however!
I should think you use quite a lot of paint Michael?
Posted
During a summer period in my long ago youth, I worked with a painter and decorator and would often 'drip' gloss paint ( any colour but Magnolia ) and white spirit onto discarded pieces of hardboard and achieved similar results. My boss was ne'er too impressed however! I should think you use quite a lot of paint Michael?Not so much paint but loads of Floetrol which doesn't come cheap.
Posted
I think I probably saw one of the YouTube demos from excitable American women - tried turning the sound down, but then of course you miss the explanations.... wouldn't be the 'Craftyartist' or something similar, would it? I can see the potential in your piece (how's that for damning it with faint praise? I admit, I admire the effort more than the result) but I think I'd have gone for an even more pour-y approach, e.g. thinner paint on a partially absorbent ground, if I were going to try it. But anyway, you're experimenting, and experiment is the whole point.
Sylvia's remark about floating paint on water takes me back some 55 years when a very patient schoolmaster tried to teach us bookbinding, specifically the creation of marbled endpapers. I took little interest in it at the time - I didn't want to be a bookbinder, to start with: but if only I'd paid attention! Sorry Mr Rickard, known to all as 'Wilf' - I wish I could do now what you did so well then that I thought I'd never be able to, and gave up.
Posted
I've left a comment in the Gallery Michael. The fluid pour technique is popular here and I've seen some lovely results. It is possible to control the flow to some extent, I've seen some reasonable landscapy results but don't ask me how they were done. However I do think they were done in stages, layered. In the workshops where I tried this we just used Liquitex pouring medium and fluid inks.
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