Acrylic Pour

We have a nice dinner on Saturday night with Grace and Patrick Draven, and during it Grace mentioned the advice someone gave her. When your creative pursuit becomes a job and a primary source of income, you have to choose a new hobby without any pressure of making money attached to it.

I knit. I’ve come to realize that my fascination with yarn has a lot to do with all the pretty colors, so this weekend I tried my hand at acrylic pours. I had done it once before and didn’t care for the result, because I have artistic talent of a snail, but I had cleaned up my craft room so Kid 1 can resume her hobby of soap making, and I found some acrylics.

Here we go. Pictures were taken outside in a very bright sunlight, because they are still drying. Texas heat has to be good for something, right? Click the images to enlarge.

Kid 2 also made one, but she isn’t here so I don’t have permission to share.

For those interested, you need acrylics. Any acrylic paint would do, even the cheap kind. I used the ones from Arteza. You also need Floetrol. You can get a massive jug of it on Amazon or any paint supply store for like $30. You need little cups to mix things in, little wooden sticks or plastic utensils to stir the paint, canvases (again, I bought mine at Arteza), a hair dryer, and some plastic trash bags or paper to keep the mess under control.

Layer your work space with paper of plastic. Make sure it’s flat, since paint will run. Put canvas on the plastic bag.

I mix about 2 parts Floetrol, 1 part paint, and 1 part water. For the painting above I did white, blue, yellow, red, and purple. No green – that happened on canvas. Pour white paint on your canvas and kind of nudge it into place with a wooden stick, like frosting a cake. While the paint is wet, pick a corner or a side, and pour some blobs of paint, one on top of another. When you’ve made a sufficiently multicolored mess, turn your hair dryer on low and blow the paint across the canvas.

Leave it alone for 3 days to dry.

Here is an instructional video by a hilarious lady named Tammy.

The roadkill comment killed me.

Have fun painting!