How to make an original piece of pour paint art for your home.

Pour paint art, ever heard of it?  I was reading a design magazine and I kept seeing these frothy watercolors like large-scale prints in these very expensive homes. I got to thinking it just looks like they swiped some paint on a canvas and presto art.  Then I thought well how much time to I have to make art for my dinning room? NONE  I started looking up prices of these beautiful art works and decided I could not afford original art.  I did the next best thing and started looking at prints,  even at their mid level pricing it was too much for us, and the fact that I couldn’t find one in a color that I loved was even more of a bummer.  So I thought well I’ll have to make time to paint.  I researched how to do the pour paint art technique that I was seeing on YouTube and decided that it looked easy enough for me to try and glamorous enough to hang on my wall.  so let’s get started on what you need and how to do your very own pour art. 

What you need for your pour art 

1. a canvas any size,  I used some 20×24 from the craft store and with my coupon I got 2 for 9$  I also bought one from Amazon  (16$)  it was more expensive but it was a much nicer quality and the paint worked much better on this one for some reason.
2. Paint- I used Sherwin Williams house paint and Rustoleum metallic paint
3. table covering you’re going to get messy)
4. clear plastic cups
5. floetrol 
6. A work table high enough that you can stand.

Here is how you do a pour paint art!

Most of the tutorial lessons started with primed canvases.  Meaning they painted it with geso or you could just paint your canvas white with the paint you have.  The propose behind this is that if you are painting and miss a spot you won’t have the canvas showing through, and the paint is supposed to adhere better to the primed canvas.  I did this on all my canvases, except my last pour which was my favorite.  I didn’t have time to prime them and crossed my fingers that it would work and it did.  So do this step or don’t do this step it should all work out OK if you cover every inch.

After priming your canvas or not,  you need to mix your paint.  The first pours I did I used regular craft paints from Martha Stewart and American Craft.  That was a fun experiment LOL   I just got them out of my craft supplies and they were all different consistency’s,  when I tried to measure them out  I didn’t have enough of one color and one color was sooo thick I wasn’t sure it would work.  It took a lot of time to thin them out and try to make them the same, in the end, none of them were the same and one even had lumps that I didn’t notice until I was pouring.  I did create a cool effect just not the one I was after. So do it right the first time.  Pour paint art isn’t hard but the paint does need to be consistent. 

first attempt

My best results came when I used Sherwin Williams house paint.  Yup, I just went online to their color swatch page and picked out complimentary colors then ordered a few small quartz and went and picked them up.  They do have paint samples that you can get mixed up as well.  If you want to paint a few large canvases you will need about two cups of paint,  if you are just pouring on small canvases or doing one project the sample sizes will be perfect. These are the colors I used for my pink art  gray Shashey 6051  Red-land 6053  Rosy Outlook  6316  Armadillo 9160  Alyssum 6589  these are the colors I used for my blue art  Swimming 6764 Open air 6491  Individual white 6008  French Morie 9056 Misty 6232    I also wanted a gold metallic vein in my pours so Rust-oleum sent me the most beautiful gold and pearl paint. It worked perfectly and added a bit of sophistication to my piece, not to mention sparkle and a glowy shine!

Here is the formula that I used to mix my paint.  I was covering two large 20×24 canvases so I mixed a half cup paint two tablespoons of floetrol and a little more than a 1/8 cup water. I mixed a double batch of white because I needed white to be the main color in my piece.   My paint was fresh and thin so this worked best for me.  You might want to do a few experimental pours to see how thin you would like it.  I say go thinner than thicker.  Too thin will just muddle the colors, but too thick and the colors won’t blend as easily.  So like I said get a piece of cardboard and do a test run of your pour paint before you start.

There are lots of way to do this my goal was to make my art look like marble.  So to achieve that look I poured large puddles of paint on my canvas I kept adding colors to the puddles until I felt like I had enough paint to spread.  I used around 6 complementary colors and two whites to get the marbled effect i wanted.

After you have your puddles pick up your canvas which you have placed on top of your covered table and plastic cups so it doesn’t touch the table, and start tipping your canvas to spread the paint.  This is the fun scary part.  There is no right or wrong way to do this going back and forth will create a flame look and just letting it drip down will create a long frothy stripy look.  So be excited with what you get because it’s your original art.  I can’t stress that enough this is your work nobody will have this in their homes!  So get excited about how unique it is.

Make sure you cover all areas of the canvas,  I had a few open spots and I had to add more paint with my finger to cover the spots,  it was amazing how good that looked.  Also, the sides of the canvas need to be covered in paint so just dip your finger in the paint on the table and dab away.  You can use a Popsicle stick to smear the paint as well,  Gosh the sky is the limit its art after all because art is art and you can do whatever you think is beautiful. 

After you have what you think you might like your pour paint art set it down on your cups and wait, you will be shocked what might happen, as it is drying cells will form and if you like that look add liquid silicone to some of the colors of your paint and it will be more space like.  (my kids are dying to try that) It changes a bit as it dries and I think gets better and better.

I love all the different looks I got from doing this but the pink marble ones are my favorite I’m so excited for you to create a masterpiece without the masterpiece price tag!  Please tag me on Instagram @theglitzypear so I can see what your art looked like.  And if you have any question please don’t hesitate to email me or DM on Instagram