I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one. The paint pouring craze peaked a couple of years ago, but I had already bought the supplies to get in on the craze, so as I was organizing some of my craft supplies, I decided now was the time. I even managed to convince my husband to help. Of course, the blank look on his face when I said we were going to do paint pouring reminded me that not everyone follows crafters on social media and spends their free time on Pinterest. So, for those who don't know, paint pouring is a method for applying paint to a canvas or board by thinning it down with a paint medium (or buying pouring paint which has been pre-thinned) and then pouring the thinned paint onto the canvas or board to achieve lovely abstract swirls.
The first thing we needed was a place to catch the paint (since it will run off the edges of the canvas). So, we whipped up a paint station from a box. We cut down the sides and then I put a piece of parchment paper (a plastic trash bag would be a good option too) on the bottom and covered it with more cardboard. I meant to use a few sheets of newspaper that I could just wad up when I was done with the project and keep the rest of the box painting station in case I wanted to paint pour again, but we didn't have any newspaper in the house (note, the next time I get ads or a paper, I need to save a few sheets). I guess the sheets of cardboard will have to do. I can still throw them out when we're done. Then I made some risers out of paper cups that I cut down to about an inch to hold the canvas up off the box (so the paint could run off).
Then I raided the craft stash for some
12x12 inch canvases that I purchased when they were on sale at Michaels ages ago.
I grabbed 4 plastic cups and poured some craft paint into each one. When I was satisfied with the colors, I added
Floetrol paint medium to each cup of paint and stirred it. There are various recipes online, but I went with 1 part paint to 1 part paint medium. I did not measure. There are other brands of paint medium, but Floetrol is the cheapest. It's often sold in the hardware store paint section, too, since it's used to help thin paint for paint sprayers.
After I stirred in the paint medium with a popsicle stick, I added a quick spray of
silicone WD-40 (not regular WD-40) to each cup and stirred it again (I forgot to take a picture of this step, so I added the can to the photo below). The silicone is used to help the paint break apart and create little cells or circles in the paint. Most of the recipes online call for silicone treadmill lubricant. I had this WD-40 on hand already (bought it for the garage door hinges), so I thought I'd use it instead of buying something new. After the paint medium and the silicone were added to the paint and stirred in well, I poured all the paint colors into the same cup, one at a time.
I ended up with a nearly full cup of paint. This was more than enough for a canvas of this size.
Then I poured the paint on to the canvas. Some tutorials have you dump the cup into the center of the canvas and lift it up, but pouring it just lets you control the pattern a bit more.
I poured my paint in a large circle to try to fill as much of the canvas as possible.
I kept pouring until all of the paint was poured out of the cup.
Then, I started tilting the canvas to cover the whole canvas with paint.
The trickiest part of the whole project was trying to get the corners covered. I had to come back with some popsicle sticks covered in the paint from the cups to help coat the corners.
When the canvas was covered, I had a large swath of one color in the middle of the canvas, so I dripped the last of a contrasting color out of one of the mixing cups to break it up a bit.
And that was it. I left it outside to dry for a couple of hours before the paint was set enough to move the canvas. It was still very wet, but I was able to lift the canvas off of the cups and set it on a piece of parchment to dry.
Next it was hubby's turn. We put a fresh canvas on the cups in the paint station box, and he got out his plastic cups and started mixing his paints.
Just as he started mixing paints in the cups, it started raining. So we made a mad dash to haul all of our paint supplies inside and set up on the kitchen counter.
After he had mixed all his paint and pouring medium and silicone, he poured it all into one cup.
Then he started pouring it onto the canvas.
He poured more slowly than I did and tried his best to reach up to the edges of the canvas.
Then he started tilting his canvas to fill the whole thing with paint and to play around with the pattern a bit.
When his canvas was completely covered, he managed to get the corners covered and set the painting back onto the paper cup risers to dry.
And that's where we're still at with this project (like 6+ hours later). It was a bunch of fun, but it's going to take ages for the paint to dry. I'll try to update this post with pictures of the canvases once they're dry, but so far the project looks like a success. I can see why this was such a huge craft trend!
Update: It took 3 days for the paintings to dry enough to be touched. The painting that got a couple hours baking in the sun before it started raining (the blue/green one) dried more quickly, but the paint cracked a bit and the paint dried more textured than the one that dried more slowly (it ended up smoother).
The biggest challenge is how tempting it is to touch the edge of the painting to test for dryness. I ended up smudging both paintings out of my sheer impatience. My husband was able to shine a light on the painting and see where it was shinier to see that it was still wet.
So, I've learned that it's easy to do paint pouring, and you can get halfway decent results without much practice--which is super satisfying, but then you have to wait for at least a couple of days for the darn things to dry. I still think it was totally worth it. :)
So, have you tried paint pouring? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!
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