Acrylic Pouring Paintings Create Magic

Acrylic pouring paintings are  wild and free creations, very much like the untamed ocean waves of winter. As Perth winter draws closer, I anticipate the July storms and squalls with winds that lash the seas into roiling, frothing layers of blue.

For my acrylic pouring paintings I’ve chosen Indanthrone Blue as my main colour.

Indanthrone  blue (pb60)  is a rich powerful staining Indigo blue with the lovely traits so common to stainers.  It spreads and runs easily, mixes well,  layers nicely, glazes perfectly, melts into white like a dream and creates a zillion tonal nuances. Definitely one of my favourite acrylics and watercolour colours.

Complemenary Pair:    Blue and Orange

I’ve also used white, a tiny bit of silver. Blue and Orange are complements, so I’ve chosen to use a pale complementary orange with white to act as a  lovely accent.

My painting process for Acrylic pourings

involves thoroughly saturating the support with sloppy creamy white all over, to act as a base ‘primer.’  This is  Very Critical!    Without it,  my other colours will not run and flow freely to create the random patterns I’m after.

So, while  the white is wet, I pour into it in  a couple of areas the staining Indanthrone blue;  tilting and rocking the support to direct the flow around just a bit.   A dash of silver in with the blue will give it a hint of a ethereal shimmer, if thats what I wish.  Be cautious,  do not go overboard with pouring the Blue.  I have done so, much to my dismay and disgust. Its so easy to just pour a little more….  do not do that!    You will lose your lovely patterns and go too dark!!

Last I smudged in a tiny drop of pale orange in a couple spots.  Just lightly.  I only wanted to use it to balance the blue with some of its opposite, orange in a very subtle and soft way, not bright and garish.

Finally, even though my fingers itched to keep doing more…. I made myself put it down and leave it alone and move onto the next canvas waiting.    Thats really the key for me, if I have another canvas right there, waiting to be Next!  I am much less inclined to overwork the first painting.

 

This next image, I basically used the same process, but without the orange.  This one also has some very fascinating patterns with the deep darks looking almost like water pools in a gorge viewed from above.  Everyone will have their own interpretation of this, which is a great thing about pouring paintings – it fosters  a lot of viewer engagement with the image.

Acrylic Pouring Paintings create magic

Pouring Paintings can create multiple layers that provide a richer sense of depth,   mesmerising and magical  patterns that can’t be created in other ways,  a wonderful and inspiring feeling of freedom to the finished painting.

Pourings can be left alone, as is.  Or they can be used as the base, the foundation background to work on and create a more detailed representational artwork.

I love them for their beautiful unexpected accidents and surprises!

In conjunction with this post, I’ve also created a new Page,   Best  Posts.

Best Posts  Page has links to several posts that are my personal favourites, with many that have relevance and insight into todays post.  The others I hope you may find enjoyable to read as well!