Acrylic Paint Pour Tutorial

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My daughter, Emma, and I had fun making these canvases for her bedroom. Now that we have done it a few times and have learned some things I am ready to share this Acrylic Paint Pour Tutorial with you!

FOR THIS ACRYLIC PAINT POUR TUTORIAL YOU WILL NEED:

• Canvases, we did a group of four
• Acrylic paints in any color you like, Emma’s new room has corals and blues and gold, we used craft paints.
• Stir sticks
• Disposable cups
• Push pins
• Drop cloth or plastic table cloth
• Pouring medium, optional
• Silicone, optional
• Water
• Gold leafing, optional
• Blow dryer

The colors we used were FolkArt and DecoArt brands acrylic paints in Dutch Aqua, Champagne metallic paint, Peacock Pearl metallic paint, Glorious Gold Metallic paint, Cameo Blush, and Crushed Coral paint. I will explain why some of the supplies are optional and what we learned.

We purchased our canvases at Hobby Lobby. They have lots of sizes to choose from and have great prices. You can buy more expensive, higher quality canvases there as well, but these were perfect for us. Just 6 bucks for a pack of two 12×24 inch canvases! We bought two packs for a total of twelve bucks.

PREP WORK:

Begin by covering your table with something to protect it. We didn’t, but you should. 😉 Plastic table cloths work great and we purchase them at the dollar store so they are very affordable.

Unwrap the canvases and flip them to the back side. You will use push pins in each corner to lift the canvas so the paint can drip off and it won’t sit in a pool of paint. Sometimes the push pins are hard to push in so we used a rubber mallet. If you want your paint to pour evenly, make sure your table is flat and level and the pins are pushed in evenly. We use a large level to check.

MIXING THE PAINT:

Okay. So many things to tell you! On the first pour we did our paint was WAY too thick. It wouldn’t move across the canvas and was very frustrating. For this pour we used half paint and half pouring medium. You really do need to add water to get the right consistency! In fact, the last pour we did was mostly just paint and water and a little pouring medium. I have seen artists that use just water and paint, but it is usually with higher quality acrylics. The paint should be pretty thin in order to move.

This painting turned out differently than ones we have done more recently with thinner paint, though both methods turned out beautiful. The great thing about art is that there really is no right or “wrong” way. That being said, I would recommend about 40% water and 60% paint. Even up to 50/50. The craft paints are more fluid to begin with so they need less water. Higher quality acrylics will need more to get the flow right. You want the paint to run off the stir stick and flow right back into the paint without making a mound on top. I hope that makes sense. As you practice you will get a feel for what works. I definitely recommend doing a few smaller pours first instead of four giant ones to begin with like we did. 🙂

We used these clear cups and added the pouring medium first, then squirted in the paint. Then stir, stir, stir! Aren’t those colors so fun?!

CHEMISTRY:

We added a few drops of silicone to each color. I have seen lots of people that use the silicone and just as many, or more, that don’t. The idea with the silicone is that it creates “cells” in the painting, which is basically circles of color inside other colors. 🙂 I found this silicone at Home Depot. We started with white paint on the canvas. We found that we should have done much more white paint to get the other colors to “move.” This time we just did a thin layer.

Once the canvases were prepped and we added the white paint, we took the cups of paint and drizzled them across all four canvases however we felt looked good. Paint right on top of other paint. You need to be mindful of what colors you place next to each other. Think of the color wheel and what colors will mix well and what won’t. Blue and yellow next to each other can create green. You don’t want to just make brown. Emma had fun helping with this part.

TRY, TRY AGAIN:

So….the first try was a total FLOP! The paint was so thick it would barely move and got frustrating pretty quickly. We decided to scrape the paint off and start over. When we scraped the paint off it left some color. Emma and I talked about it and we decided we liked the look so instead of starting with white again, we just left that as our background. We used a putty knife to get the paint off and made kind of a pattern as we scraped. It looked like this.

To really get the paint to move you need paint on the background, but we didn’t realize that at the time, so we just poured paint again. This time we made the paint thinner with a little water but it was still much thicker than it should have been.

After the paint was poured, very quickly, we used the blow dryer on low to “push” the paint where we wanted it.

WATCH THE MAGIC:

It is so dang fun to watch the cells pop up and the amazing patterns and textures appear. We also tipped the canvases to help move the paint where we wanted it. The further you “stretch” the paint the more texture and cells you will get. Just be careful not to move the paint colors back and forth over each other too much or it will turn muddy. You can also use a torch to pop the bubbles in the paint and help draw out the cells. We have a torch now and love what it does, but we didn’t have one when we did these canvases. They are still so beautiful!

BLING IT UP:

Another great tip is to use at least one color that is metallic. It really makes the painting extra special and helps to create cells. We decided to take it a step further and added gold leaf flakes. You want to add this very carefully with tweezers just where you want it. It needs to be added while the painting is wet, or you could add it after it is dry with a little Mod Podge to stick it on.

What do you think? Yay or nay on the gold leaf? We LOVE it! We added it just over the parts that were already gold. It added a great texture and even more sparkle.

WISE ONE:

Because our paint was thicker than it should have been, it took several days to dry. I asked Emma if we could re-do the paintings because I was sure we could do better, but she told me no. She loves them the way they are. 🙂 She said to make sure to give the advice to not fiddle with it when it looks pretty good or you will just make a mess! Yep. She learned that by watching me mess things up. ha! Here they hung on her wall above her bed.

It was challenging to get a good picture of the colors in her room. Her walls are a creamy color so my camera kept reading more yellow. They really are so fun!

The details are really beautiful and it creates such a fun vibe in her room.

If you loved this tutorial, please share! You may also like Emma’s Gold Leaf Clock.

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