Acrylic Pouring No 1

 Something a bit different from me today ... Acrylic Pouring.

I recently discovered an amazing lady from Holland called Annemarie Ridderhof and her brilliant Acrylic Pouring tutorials on YouTube. Annemarie is one of those artists who 'gives' constantly. A lot of artists won't share their techniques or answer questions. Annemarie gives everything, she goes over and over her technique, answers everyones questions and even tries out experiments on behalf of us crafters to save us the expense of things going wrong. She is one of those people that makes this world a better place and I can't thank her enough for sharing her knowledge.

I really do encourage you to check out her YouTube videos if you're interested in giving this a go.

Now before I go any further I must tell you that I haven't mastered this technique yet, I'm getting there but I have a way to go before I perfect it. Eventually I hope to make some canvas wall art and cards with my finished pieces ... at least that's the plan.

Prepare yourself for an initial outlay for tools, paints, mixatives and accessories and prepare BIG TIME to get messy. There are lots of variations on materials used, lots of experimenting with alternative products, so if you are going to give this a go, check out all of the available videos first before you dash out and spend your hard earned cash. 

In my experiment I used a decent brand of white acrylic and 3 cheap coloured brands. (Check out the videos regarding using opaque & transparent colours). I put a squirt of each colour paint into a plastic cup and then added Liquitex Pouring Medium, water and hair serum to each cup and stirred until I had a fluid stream of liquid. I then poured a bit of each colour, white first, into a fresh cup..a bit of white, then each colour, then repeated until I'd used up all of my paint.

I then put my piece of Yupo (you can use a canvas, wood, MDF, etc...) over the top of my cup, CAREFULLY flipped it over and placed it onto my make-shift drip tray (which is a cheap, foil, meat tray with 5 upside down plastic cups on which to balance my paper...the idea being that the paint can drip off the sides).

Leave the cup in place for a short while, wait for the paint to drop inside, then lift...et voila! (The photo above).

Wait and watch those cells (bubble-looking effect) appear. You then blow torch the paint and encourage more cells to be produced (photo above). This is what the hair serum is supposed to create. Hair serum is a cheap / nicer smelling alternative to sillicone / dimethicone.

Now it's at this stage that I am still learning, as now you are supposed to tilt the Yupo, or whatever you are using, and allow the paint to spread around. For some reason I am losing those beautiful cells as the paint stretches....Grrrr. I am getting a beautiful pattern but what I'm aiming for is a pattern AND cells (a stetched version of the 'spotty' photo above). 

I decided to mix up some more yellow, brown and white, with a tad more serum, and streaked it across the Yupo, blow torched it again and managed to get a 'lacing' effect in the yellow patch at the bottom.

I then totally lost my mind and sprinkled some silver glitter.

Here's a close up of one portion.

So it's early days in my experimenting with Acrylic Pouring, it's frustrating, but when I finally 'get it' the reward will be huge as the results can be breathtaking.

If you fancy giving this a go, check out Annemarie Ridderhof on YouTube and join the Acrylic Pouring Basics page on Facebook where we all encourage each other.