July 5, 2022
It was pouring art in my yard this Canada weekend – literally! Pouring paint has become really popular recently. The results are often abstract, which is fairly new for me. So I need your help to find out what it is that YOU see in these two new artworks… so that I can come up with proper titles… Please use the comments section to share your thoughts and impressions!
What is paint pouring all about?
For starters: it’s messy!
Wear gloves and an apron and old clothes underneath. Have paper towel handy for spills.
Second: it requires patience.
It takes 2 – 4 weeks for the artwork to completely dry which means you need horizontal spaces to let them rest. After that, you usually have to clean off the surplus of oil and seal the painting so that it is protected and remains intact for years to come. Mine are currently resting in my basement studios and we will see in a month how they survive that prolonged nap-time!
An ideal outside project
This is a project that is best done outside( or in a space that can handle paint splatter, pools of leftover mixes and dirty cups). I chose an old garden table with a big piece of carton on it. I used cheap picnic cups for the paint mixes and wooden popsicle sticks to stir them.
In artwork #1 above, I chose black as my base colour. Many demo-videos use white, but I wanted to do my own thing. I used special pouring paints and added pouring medium to make them even more fluid. And to promote a large number of random ‘cells’ in the paint, I added a drop if silicone oil to each individual colour (lots of suggestions to be found online about the preferred ratios of these elements and the effects they generate).
I spread out the black base over 2/3rds of the canvas quite liberally. I just used my gloved fingers. Then the fun began! I poured a line of each individual colour on the side of the canvas, where there was no base colour. The more contrast in the colour, the more surprising the results. I then grabbed an old canvas board and used it to move the paints from one side to the other, into the black, with just light pressure. And voilà. My piece of art was born and I did not feel the need to rework any part of it.
Here is a detail that clearly shows what is meant with the word ‘cells’. A very appropriate name: it reminds me of my old biology class, when we studied plant cells under a microscope.
The second artwork: different colours
I have some visions about the first artwork, about what I see in it. But I am still blank about this second one. I wanted to use different colours and I am not even sure that I have positioned it correctly. I might do some more work on it once it is dry? Who knows… You tell me!
The third piece…
I did make a third piece, but I will save that for another post, as I tried to make it more like a living creature and I have an actual realistic painting on the easel that I want to post side by side. Abstract versus realism. For now, this pouring art day was really fun and I can see how it gets the creative juices flowing!