Acrylic abstraction

I was pretty happy with my first attempts at acrylic pouring on canvas. Well- if we don’t count last nights fiasco – which I ended up scraping off the canvas into the rubbish bin. I don’t know about you but I’m definitely not counting it.

It’s a very simple but unpredictable artform which I’ve been meaning to have a go at for some time. In fact ever since I bought a bottle of the pouring medium at my local art store about 6 months ago. It’s been sitting on the shelf in my little studio tempting me and I finally succumbed at 10 o’clock last night. Probably would have been better to wait till this morning but there you go- when the muse strikes she’s very insistent!

Basically you fill a few plastic cups with different coloured paint and then thin it down with some pouring medium and water to a thin pancake batter consistency. Add a squirt of silicone, stir and ten layer the colours in another plastic cup starting with white and randomly dropping in the other colours. Then sit a canvas on top of the cup, with said cup centered on the canvas and turn the whole thing upside down. Now just slowly and cleanly lift the cup away from the canvas but NOT straight upwards – off to the side a little.

The whole lot glugs out creating beautiful and random colours and patterns. Tilting the canvas moves the paint around to exaggerate sections of pattern and cover the canvas. At this stage the paint starts dripping down the edges and the mess gets messier. It’s not called a dirty pour without reason! Using a blow torch to run over the surface helps to pop any little air bubbles and create small “cells” where the denser colour (white is densest) drops to the bottom and the lighter colours rise to the surface.

I love the chaos and random beauty of these- not sure if I’ll keep doing it but really enjoyed the process. Let’s see if they dry OK before I make up my mind.