Painting Pouring 101

I'm a sucker for free art projects in case you didn't realize that by now. When Neenah Library was hosting a paint pouring project, I put it on my calendar without knowing what it exactly was. It just sounded like fun. 

Paint pouring is a technique that you allows you to blend paint together to create a marble effect you wouldn't normally get with regular blending. 

Acrylic paint is mixed with a glue/water mixture and then literally poured onto canvas. 

Then you tilt the canvas from side to side to create the marble effect. Because the paint is slightly thicker, you may need to help get it to edges. You may also have to help fill in the holes where the paint doesn't want to go. If you tilt the canvas in all directions it really helps with the blending. 

I choose spring colors for my initial painting -- pink, yellow, and aqua. Instead of a nice pastel spring look, it turned into psychedelic '70s. I'm beginning to think I need to stay away from pink and yellow when I do art projects. Everything I do with those colors turns into something from the '60s or '70s.

Since their was extra canvas, I made a smaller one with fall colors.. red, yellow, orange.. The paint was a tad runnier so it was much easier to swirl. I really liked how this one turned out while still wet.

However as the paint dries, the colors become more muted and less vibrant. The psychedlic '70s piece is much more tolerable -- not so psychedlic. The bright fall one though is too dull now. It's still cool but it was much cooler when wet. 

This is one art project I might consider doing again at home. It is actually very calming and you know how your paint is going to swirl together.