I have a number of staple products that I use when creating my fluid acrylics so I thought I would share some of them here so that you know exactly what I am using and if you want to you can try and get hold of the same thing or something similar. So here are my choices of paint pouring products:

Paint	Canvases	Spreader
Silver and Gold Powder		Resin
Silicone	Floetrol	Alcohol
Liquitex Pouring Medium		Lazy Susan

What Paint to Use

In terms of paint I am often asked what kind of paint I use. As the paint is being watered down it is important to use good quality (i.e. artist quality not student quality) paint.

One reason for this is that if you try and varnish watered down poor quality acrylic paint, the paint sometimes ‘leaks’ and actually gets picked up by the varnish (so you may end up with some color on your white). By using artist quality paint, it tends to be more permanent and does ‘fix’ even when watered down.

Canvases

When you are doing paint pouring, it can become quite addictive and if you are like me then you may want to keep pouring pretty much all day.

One thing I do is to pick out colours that work well in one painting and then do a new one with those colours. So for me I get through quite a few canvases.

Sometimes the painting won’t work and I will scrape off the paint and start again. Other times I decide after it has dried that I don’t like it so I have a roll of canvas and can restretch over the frame.

Anyway, one of my favourite sizes for paint pouring is 30 x 30cm and you can get some quite good value canvases online:

Spreading the Paint on the Canvas

You can use pretty much anything you like to spread the paint on the canvas but one tool that I almost found by accident that I particularly like is my icing spreader.

When you apply this to the paint, flat, it brings all the paint together and almost sucks the paint so that if you twist it slightly you get some really nice effects. You can get these plastic tools pretty cheaply online and in specialist cake shops. Here are the links to buying them online in the US and UK:

Silver and Gold Powder

I love adding gold and silver powder to my paintings (and also glitter) just to give an extra bit of sparkle.

You only need the smallest amount of powder so my recommendation is to use a small sponge to pick it up but before tapping the sponge lightly on the painting, tap as much of the powder off (almost) as you can.

Obviously you can get glitter and pretty much any craft shop but the gold and silver powder seem to be a bit harder to get hold of so here are a couple of links:

US Powders

UK Powders

Resin

You can see more about why and how I use resin on the page about varnishes. Resin is really very effective for fluid acrylic paintings but it doesn’t come cheap as decent sized paintings need a good lot for that extra shine.

I have tried a few different resins but my favourite at the moment is Art Resin. You mix it 1 to 1 with the hardener and it gives a nice clear coat with good coverage. You can get this in the UK and the US although availability through Amazon varies.

The US option is the one that I have been using most recently and have been really happy with. It is also easy to use as it is a 1 to 1 mix. The Mastercast one I think is pretty similar and I may well try that one next time.

Silicone

If you add silicone to the paint then you can get some amazing effects as you can see by the details on this method. You can use either liquid or spray silicone and you can get either of these online as follows, although I think the liquid is easier to use and control how much you put in but you can still get good results from both. In the USA, one manufacturer, Impresa (who make standard silicone products) have made (or more likely repackaged) a silicon liquid specifically aimed at acrylic pouring. It comes with a pipette for ease of use and an easy squeeze bottle and is the right weight and thickness for paint pouring.

Floetrol

Floetrol can be used as a pouring medium and will extend the paint and make it a little bit thinner although you may also want to use a bit of water with it. You can get some of the cell effects with Floetrol or otherwise you can just use it to make nice fluid acrylic paintings. It is available in both the UK and the US, although it seems to be much cheaper in the US! – see below:

Liquitex Pouring Medium

This is one of the most popular mediums for pouring but it is a little bit expensive, especially if you are starting out. I find that it adds a glossy finish to the paint which means that you actually don’t need to enhance it with a gloss varnish if you don’t want to.

 

Rubbing Alcohol

Rubbing alcohol or isopropyl alcohol can also be used as an additive in small quantities, often with another pouring medium. I know in the UK this is not necessarily easy to find in shops so I have bought mine online and it is not too expensive:

Lazy Susan

Just so that you are aware, I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Any fees I earn go towards buying the products I need to create my art 🙂