Pooled Paint Pictures

In many ways, this post is actually a lesson in the importance of documenting your process, so you can recreate things you do at a later date. A little while ago, I tried something out, I think mostly just because I had quite a bit of paint left over at the time that I wanted to use up, and didn’t know how else to get rid of it, which ended up producing a really interesting piece of work. I liked it so much I even posted about it on Instagram.

Of course, now, several months later, when I wanted to try and do something similar, I can’t recreate it! However, as is always the case, the results I’ve ended up with have turned out pretty good, even if they weren’t my original plan.

This is the picture I was trying to recreate. I really like the texture of t, so I wanted to try and create that effect again.

I thought my process for making this was as follows:

• A wash of colour with watered down acrylic paint onto cartridge paper
• Pour the remaining watered down acrylic paint onto a plastic sheet, then place the paper face down on top
• Allow to dry

However, this was clearly not the case! I did the same technique first of all with thick card instead of cartridge paper, but didn’t get the same texture, so I tried it again with cartridge paper. Although I got some texture, it was nothing like what I’d got in my original attempt. And what was even more strange, what the paint stuck to the plastic in some places, which meant I ripped the paper when taking it off.

I decided, then, to give up trying to recreate that technique and instead try overlaying the pooled paint onto the thick card, as I quite like the effect it created. At times, doing this process, I ended up with some excess wet paint left on the plastic, and so took prints off that too. I also used the acrylic paint transfer technique I wrote about in a previous post in one example.

Here are my results:

This definitely started out as an incredibly frustrating exercise, but I’m pleased with that I’ve ended up making. There are a couple of the above examples which I might add a few more layers onto, because I think they could end up working as finished pieces.

And next time, I try something new, even if it is just to get rid of excess paint, I will make a note of it so I don’t forget!