My First Acrylic Pour

So for a while now I've wanted to try Acrylic Pouring.  Essentially you take different colors of paint, put them together in a cup, then dump them out on a canvas and see what happens.  It's a bit more complicated than that in reality, but that's then general idea.  There are a variety of ways you can get the paint on the canvas, from straight pours, dirty pours, swipes, etc...  In the end it creates a pretty unique and interesting abstract piece of art.

I'm going to go step by step through the supplies needed, paint thinning ratio, process and then show the finished painting at the end.

Required Supplies needed: (i'll post links to specific products at the bottom of the post)
Acrylic Paints (recommend 4-5 colors)
Canvas (in this case I used a 8x10in)
Floetrol (Latex) Pouring medium
Silicone Oil
Distilled Water
mixing cups

Recommended Supplies:
Push Pins (keeps canvas off the working surface
latex gloves
paper towels
craft sticks (popsicle sticks)
kitchen Torch (I used a fire started that has a torch instead of a flame)
Clear Gloss Spray

Paint Thinning Ratio
2 parts Floetrol (10ml)
1 part Paint (5ml)
1 part Water (5ml)
5-6 drops silicone oil / 1oz paint (I used 4 drops since I only had about .6oz of paint)

Process

1. I started by mixing the paint and Floetrol together, 2 parts floetrol to 1 part paint.  Mix with a craft stick and use a separate cup for each color paint.  For an 8x10 canvas, you will need about 3oz of paint total in order sufficiently have enough paint to fully cover the canvas and sides of the canvas, without having too much. 
2. Add 1 part water to the Floetrol/Paint Mixture and mix really well.
3. In my case, I mixed 5 colors, each had about 0.6oz.
4. I then added the colors to a 5oz cup.  Here's the order I added them to the cup.
1. Titanium White
2. Brilliant Blue
3. Quinacrinone Rose
4. Mars Black
5. Island Blue
5. I did some other prep work beforehand to get the painting space ready, put paper towels down, put pushpins in the corners of the canvas(underneath).
6. Pour the paint.  This is the fun part watching it mix on the canvas, you can move it around to coat the canvas anyway you like.
7. Use the torch (if you want).  The torch will heat up the surface, causing the silicone oil to and the paints to release and form cells in the paint.  It gives a really cool effect to the painting.
8. Let it dry, this could take up to a day or two, depending on how much paint you put down.
9. Protect the painting, spray a coat of clear gloss over the painting.

OK, so here's the piece as it currently stands.  It still isn't 100% dry yet.

I did record the entire process I used to create the painting, but it turns out I need some serious work on my videography & presenting skills.  I will post the video to YouTube, but it is unlisted and only available through this link here. YouTube Video. Keep in mind, I realized after recording this that I need to seriously improve my verbal and presentation skills.

Links to supplies:
Floetrol
Silicone Oil
**As a side note, I bought both the Floetrol and the Silicone oil at Home Depot.  The Floetrol was by the industrial paint sprayers and the Silicone Oil was in the tools area by the lubricants.  Ask an associate if you can't find them.

If you'd like to start with a kit, that has some of these supplies already in it, here is one from Amazon that I found.  Acrylic Pouring Kit.

Online Art Lessons - Great Find!

Today I found this website that has a whole plethora of online art lessons, courses and tutorials.  There is some paid content on the site, but a whole bunch of free content as well.  Right now, I think I'm most interested in the watercolor painting classes and some of the tutorials.

Online Art Lessons Website

Here's an example of the Watercolor Rocks Tutorial.

I recommend at least bookmarking the site and coming back later to check out what they have.

This is one of the other areas I'm interested in as well is the Sketchbook Basics tutorial, as I'm not the best sketch artist by any means.  I have to do a lot of tracing for my drawings.

Well, that's it for now.

Largemouth Bass

So I found this simple line drawing of a largemouth bass and decided to give it a try.  I really like the way it turned out.  Initially I had just painted the fish.  I then decided to just splash on some blue paint, then added the water at the bottom and the splash.  To finish off the drawing, I added the fishing line to make it look like it was fighting.

Red Barn

In keeping with the recent rustic theme/barn theme, I decided I wanted to do something with a bit more color in it this time.

I followed the same routine I usually do:

1. Find a picture
2. Turn it into a black & white line drawing on Gimp
3. Trace and Ink the image
4. Paint

Here's the finished image of the barn.  The original picture, the barn is brown, but I opted for a more vibrant red.

Tree Doodles

I spent time doodling some trees the other day.  I experimented with a variety of designs and colors.  Can you find the tree that sticks out?

Here is the original sketch, prior to painting.  Sorry it's a bit dark, I sketched it at night, painted the next day.

Paints used were from my Sakura Koi Field Sketch box.

Review of Sakura Koi Field Sketch Box

Right now, my go to Watercolor painting kit is the Field Sketch Box from Sakura.  The colors are really vibrant, and the detachable palette and portable nature make it really easy to paint anywhere.  Because of the portability and easy of use, it is much handier to get out, than my tube paints.

Below you can see a picture of my Koi 24 Color kit, along with one of my watercolor paintings.

Amazon Link
Sakura Koi Products on Amazon
These kits come in a variety of sizes, from 12, 18, 24, 30, 36 & 48 pans.

Some of the features of my particular kit (24 Pan) include:

• 24 Half Pan watercolor paints
• A refillable watercolor brush
• 2 dabbing sponges
• A detachable, pegged palette
• Small size, easy portability, 6.25" x 4.5" x 1.125"
• A base pull-down ring for holding

My Ratings of the Set:
Value: 5 (assuming $20 purchase price)
Vibrancy: 5
Quality of Pans: 4
Quality of Accessories: 4.5
Portability / Ease of Use: 5
Overall Rating: 4.5

As for the Cost, the set retails for around $40, but you can pick one up at your local craft store typically for around $25, or on Amazon for about $21.  This is a great value for the $20-25 range, average value if you are paying $40.

As for the overall quality of the set, the majority of the pans have held up well, however 1 or two of them have quite a bit of cracking, especially my Prussian Blue.  It hasn't affected the vibrancy of the colors, or anything else, but for that reason alone it's why I rated the Quality of Pans below at a 4, not a 5.

One thing I did when I purchased the set was to create a palette of the colors, which really helps when choosing what colors to select.  Here is a picture of the palette I created.  I suggest doing this when you get a new kit like this to not only see what the colors actually produce, but to get a sense of how well the paint works from the pans to the paper.

For any other details on the set, visit Sakura's website, which I have listed below.
Sakura Website

Sophie's Barn

On the way to Iowa from Illinois along I-80, there is a barn on the south side of the road, somewhere near mile marker 50.  It is starting to get run down, but is a favorite of my mother-in-law, so I decided to paint it from one of the pictures we had taken sometime along the way.

Here's the finished piece, I really like the way it turned out in the end.

Sophie's Barn

Here's the original picture I painted it from.