Cheap Acrylic Pouring on a Budget: How to Save Money While Still Creating Amazing Paintings

Are you feeling the pinch yet? Are you starving the kids and husband so you can spend the grocery money on more paint and canvases? Unless you are selling your work, this pouring and painting addiction can start to cost money. But you still want to paint, want to experiment, want to learn and try new things so how can you do that and keep the costs down?

In this video I look at various options and ideas for how to spend less and get to paint more. I’ll look at:

Sadly in the end due to either weather or feline circumstances beyond my control, the painting was lost. But it had been nice before that, and I’m confident that those on a tighter budget can still get great results and have fun doing it. Enjoy your pouring!

Check out the slideshow for more pictures of this painting – before it fell on the floor, obviously!

 

16 thoughts on “Cheap Acrylic Pouring on a Budget: How to Save Money While Still Creating Amazing Paintings”

  1. Deby, you are an fun & informative teacher. As you teach the beginners or experienced, I feel we need to give them some basic safety information: get away from using the plastic cups holding up the pieces. They are light and often do not stay in place after we pick up the canvas on top. My concern, when torching the sides of the painting, could cause the cups holding up the canvas to melt. I use glass jars (baby food jars would work) that are short and I also bought 4 cans of soup in the ‘ready to expire’ section for $1.00. I did not open the cans but just took off the paper label. They are heavy, stay in place and will not melt when I torch the sides. You could also use four cans that have been emptied but the height.

    Please, inform everyone never to hold the painting while torching – I’ve seen a nasty burn below a painter’s wrist.

    I have also stopped using the wooden stir sticks. I now save the plastic knives that seem never to go bad.

  2. Deby what would be a good formula or mix to start with acrylic pouring? Your Ebook getting started with acrylic pouring, is there a book that I may get at my library or can you make this into a book form please? Thanks

    1. I’m not aware of any printed book as yet, but I am working on it. Its going to be a long time though before I could have that published.In terms of an easy recipe, try the one I use every day. 2 parts paint, 1 part Floetrol, water as needed for a creamy consistency and a drop or two of the treadmill oil per color. Seems to work well with my paints, but be aware that there are 100 different recipes for a reason – different paints etc seem to work better with different recipes.

    2. thanks, I will save this and try. I also notice the cells may form in the paintings, what can I do to avoid the cells are have very little of them? I think a lot of cells takes away from the painting, however very little cells can make it appealing.

    3. Sometimes it can be difficult to stop the cells appearing. Make sure not to use any oil based products like silicone etc in the pour. If you are using floetrol, you might also find it better to switch to the Liquitex or to a gloss medium for your pouring medium as the floetrol seems to like to create cells even on its own.

    4. Thanks, saving this to my notes. I am a beginner and on a tight budget. Do you have an email you care to share please?

    5. The easiest way for you to ask questions and get good and quick answers is to use the chat group on Facebook. I get more than a hundred emails a day and I do my best to reply but it can take me a long time to get to them all. So the instant answers on Facebook usually will be more useful for you.

    6. What about the treadmill oil, should a drop or two per color still be used to control the cells eventhough it’s an oil based?

    7. If you don’t want cells in your pour, the definitely don’t include any of the silicone or dimethicone products.

  3. Ms Deby
    Curious can you add resin to the pour or do it have to be apply after the pour is done as a finally step after it has dried?

    1. You can do either. You can pour the whole piece in resin with paints as colorants, or you can paint and then use a clear resin over the top. But using resin as your ‘paint’ is really a whole different subject and needs different colorants, methods and techniques. If you like the look of both pouring and resin, I would suggest pouring with paints and then using a clear resin coat to seal it.

  4. Hi

    One thing I keep wondering about, is what people place their canvas on when they use a lighter/torch on it? I work on a regular old table haha so I doubt that it would be safe to just introduce fire to the situation lol.

    1. I have my canvas on a piece of sheet plastic and sat on the table. There is no change of burning if you are doing it correctly. You are only barely warming the paint.

  5. I just now saw this video on Pinterest. Thank you SO much for posting it! I’d always wondered if barbecue lighters would work for torching, and you finally solved the mystery.

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