Mix, Then Pour: Acrylic Painting Technique

(This acrylic painting demonstration was previously published in Mixed Media Painting Workshop: Explore Mediums, Techniques and the Personal Artistic Journey by Jean Pederson, copyright 2013. It is republished here courtesy of CreateMixedMedia.com.)

In this demonstration, you’ll discover the interesting skins you can create by pouring from a container with a mix of fluid acrylic in self-leveling gel.

What You’ll Need

container
fluid acrylics: turquoise, Pyrrole Red, Diarylide Yellow, Quinacridone Gold,
gesso (white)
self-leveling gel
surface of your choice

1. Pour some self-leveling gel into a container.

2. Squeeze some turquoise paint into your container with the self-leveling gel.

3. Repeat the process with Pyrrole Red and Diarylide Yellow, allowing the paint to move within the mixture.

4. Add Quinacridone Gold and white gesso to the mix. Turn the container around and from side to side to promote paint movement within the self-leveling gel.

5. Tilt the container and begin to pour the mixture onto your surface in the desired areas. The paint has not been allowed to mix thoroughly, so you will see lovely striations as you pour the paint.

6. Try to create a wide pouring area with your paint and pour slowly. The result will be a lot like ribbon candy. Think about where you could apply this technique within your paintings.

7. Finish pouring and look at the result.

8. Try tilting your surface to further encourage movement of the paint.

9. Try using a tool to spread out the paint where desired. I wanted to have some of the mixture mush together more and push to the edges.

10. The exercise is complete! Where the paint dries it will adhere to the board. The surface will accept subsequent layers of paint.

When the medium dries, it adheres to the surface and cannot be peeled off.
You can see the taupe ground showing through the dried self-leveling gel. The tinted ground also reduced the intensity of other transparent colors.

Gallery: Pieces in Balance
12″ × 12″ (30cm × 30cm), mixed media on paper, collection of the artist
Beginning with a surface that already had collage and paint on it, I superimposed a floral design and then went in with more collage for more relief. The grid area is part of the original collage, and you can also see watercolor crayon that shows through the many layers of different types of gels and mediums. I used self-leveling gel to build up the depth so that you look through these layers to see opacity and transparency.

Pieces in the Balance
Detail

This tutorial was previously published in Mixed Media Painting Workshop, copyright Jean Pederson 2013; republished here courtesy of CreateMixedMedia.com.

Learn more about Mixed Media Painting Workshop by Jean Pederson by clicking here.