Fluid Acrylic Pouring

You know why I love fluid acrylics? Because they’re the perfect combination of control and chaos. These delightfully surprising pouring mediums mean that you get to meticulously select your colours and pouring order and then just turn it all over to the fluid pouring gods and hope for the best. Plus mixing paints together makes me feel like a wizard.

Step 1

We’re using the Wallack’s Fluid Acrylics and Wallack's Pouring Mediums and they come in pretty much every colour imaginable. Spend some time googling all the potential colour combos. Really there’s no wrong combination, but your choice of colours can impact the “cells” or little bubbles of colour within colour which is often the goal with pouring mediums. If you stick to a few bright colours, and a white and a black, you can increase your chances of a really interesting pour. We’re also using the Demco's new Silicone Oil which helps encourage cells.

Step 2

You’ll also need a surface to pour on (any canvas or panel will do) and some cups for your medium. Optional tools are some silicone scrapers to graze over the surface of your pour and a heat gun or a hair dryer to help set it. Also something to cover the surface you’re working on unless you’d like that covered in paint-pour art as well.

Step 3

Take your chosen colours and pour them into separate cups and give them all a stir. I recommend this instead of pouring straight into one cup because it adds air into your medium which makes for a more interesting pour.

Once you’ve done that, you can pick a “base” colour (black or white works well for this) and pour your higher contrast colours into it. At any point, you can add a drop or two of your Demco Silicone. One or two drops for every ½ cup of paint is plenty! There’s no right or wrong order to pour your mediums, we’re just looking for an interesting mix.

 Step 4 

Bask in the glory of your beautiful medium mix and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Then take your canvas panel and stick it on top of your cup. Hold it firmly in place and flip the whole thing upside down so your cup is now resting upside down on top of your panel.

Note: This is an excellent time for your hand to slip and the paint to go flying and to have to start all over again. Try that at least once because it’s part of the pouring experience.

Step 5

Tap the top of the cup lightly because it makes us all FEEL like we’re getting more paint out of there. Then lift your cup to reveal what looks like some weird futuristic oil spill.

Step 6 

Tilt the canvas to ensure the whole area is covered. You can use your fingers to dab the paint into the corners, and you can to try to stretch the most interesting parts of your pour towards the centre of your canvas.

Bask in the glory of your amazing art piece! Take selfies! Post insta stories! All the other steps are optional so if you wander away now, you can still congratulate yourself on a job well done!

Every pour turns out different and if you want to effect the outcome, there are a couple things you can do at this point. Running an edge lightly over the paint surface can help bring out more cells and pockets of contrasting colour. Note that it can also just smudge the whole thing up so a light touch is best. You can also blow into the paint to direct it using a straw, or use a heat gun (a hair dryer works in a pinch) to help the paint set and pop air bubbles.

Step 7

After that, you’ll want to give this thing at least a couple of days to dry. Paint pours use a thicker coat of medium so ideally you want to let this thing set for 72 hours before you move it. Make sure it’s on a surface it won’t stick to. Plastic wrap or an old cooling rack are both good options.

That’s it, you’re done! Now go make something beautiful, even if it is just a mess.

Happy making!