Tuesday Tips and Techniques: Pour It On!

If you're looking for a textured, spontaneous background, pouring paint is about as fun and spontaneous as you can get!  I've used this method with watercolors, artist and craft acrylics, and acrylic inks.  Today, I'm using craft acrylics.  I mixed the colors ahead of time.

I've diluted the acrylics to a 50/50 mixture of paint and water.  I've used old pudding cup containers. I usually use only two colors, but I opted for three today.  Before I began pouring the paint, I used a light coating of heavy bodied gesso to both pages and let it dry (with some help from my hair dryer).  That was my first layer of texture.

I wet both pages before I began pouring my paint.  This enables the paint to run more freely as I tilt the pages.  I was pretty liberal with the water.

I used yellow first, pouring only on the left side of my journal.  I then took the right page and pressed it into the left side rubbing the pages together before opening again.

I then applied the pink paint to the left side, letting the colors pool and run together. Again,  I pressed  the two pages together.

I added the blue last, and this time, I added it to the right page.  I began to drip water into the wet paint to let it spread more as I began to tilt the pages from top to bottom and side to side.  Once again, I pressed the pages together.

The pages were becoming a little saturated with both paint and water, so I decided to lift some of it off with dry paper towel.  As an added bonus, the pattern of the paper towel left behind interesting texture.

I also used the paper towel like a mop, blending some of the paint and also leaving some hard edges behind.

I added additional drops of paint for deeper color and texture, filling in some of the areas that were too white.

Here's the final product and some close ups of the wonderful texture achieved using this method.   It's messy, but loads of fun!

Give this method a try!  You'll have a lot of fun playing with the paint.  It's also a great background for intuitive pages.  After the pages dry, sit back and have a look - what do you see in your background?  Expand upon it.  You can also add collaged elements on top of it, more gesso, and more poured paint.

And don't even think about throwing out that yummy paper towel!  After it's dry, (if you're using a 2-ply paper towel, it can be pulled apart) you can collage it into later pages.

CELEBRATE * LOVE * CREATE