Paint Pour

Paint Pour workshop

On 15 July 2020 Emma Morrissey will be running a Paint Pour workshop for us. It will be messy so I thought I would have a go and pass on any useful tips that I can.

A ‘sensible’ basic kit is as follows:

A plastic table cloth or similar (to protect the table)

A tray or other low sided container covered in paper and/or plastic(this needs to be big enough to fit your canvas with room to spare

Canvas, board or whatever surface you want to paint onto

Acrylic paints

Containers for mixing paints

Something to stir the paint with e.g. wooden paddles

Latex gloves

Glue

Optional other items such as string, strainers etc for creating patterns

So, first let’s get all the items we need (the glue is missing from the photo and I show more colours than I actually used):

You will see later how incredibly different the pictures can be when using exactly the same colours! The paint colours I used were:

Cerulean blue

Primary yellow

Titanium white

Primary magenta

Now it’s time to mix the paint. As a rough guide, if you measure your canvas in centimeters and do this sum, you will get a good guide to how many millilitres of paint you need to cover the canvas:

(length x width x 1.5) / 10

At this stage put each colour you want to use into separate containers and mix with the glue.

The proportions of paint to glue is trial and error but I used approximately 5ml paint to 30ml glue to get a good, runny consistency.

Here my paints are mixed and ready to be used. Note the addition of a larger glass container, some strips of string and a second canvas.

My First Picture – Very Colourful!

First I poured my white paint onto the canvas and moved the canvas from side to side until the whole surface was covered. I then immediately poured each of the other colours in turn onto the canvas in random places and with random designs. I then tilted the canvas from side to side until the whole surface was covered and then dragged a piece of string across it in places. It now has to be left to dry. Here’s the result:

My Second Picture – Much More Subdued Colouring

For this picture I mixed up the same colours again and poured them into my larger glass container in this order: white, magenta, yellow, blue. I then placed the canvas on top of the glass container and flipped it over. I decided to move the glass around the canvas a bit to see what happened and then moved it to the centre of the canvas and lifted the glass away. Once the whole canvas was covered with paint I dipped a piece of string in some of the cerulean blue paint and dragged it across the canvas in a few places. This is the result:

My Third Picture – Using Mountboard

What I learned from this was that mountboard is too flexible and the end result was a rather curved surface. I did raise the card off the work surface so the paint ran off much better. I made the paint more runny by adding a little water and the end result was much more successful. Air bubbles are a bit of a problem but that was because I was working quickly and did not let the bubbles work their way out of the paint. I believe a blowtorch is a good tool to use to disperse bubbles but fortunately for the fire brigade I have not got one!

Top Tips

Have a paint brush handy to touch up places where the paint doesn’t easily reach (especially the sides of the canvas)

Make sure the table and tray is very well covered

Insert pins into the corners of the underside of canvas to lift it off the table

a stiff surface works best

Wear gloves

Make the paint mixture very runny and make enough of it

Be prepared to leave the pictures for 2 weeks to fully set

Have a place to dispose of unused paint

Experiment and have fun!