As I’m still relatively new to pouring as an art form I often find myself rummaging through the blog and the channel trying to find a how-to on a technique or inspiration or a certain color scheme. I have explored the deepest depths of these archives and I’m still discovering things. And then I read Kelsey Rodriguez’s piece on the importance of reaching out to the local community and I realized how right she was and how often I reach out to this community without even realizing it. With all of that swirling around in my mind I wanted to draw up something of a little cheat sheet/my favorite hits for people who are just now coming to this community or for people who maybe haven’t yet dived into the depths of all of the things there are to offer. These are a few of my favorites, the articles I have found to be the most inspirational, most helpful. I hope they help you all, too!
Jenny Posts’s Opal Pour
This was one of the first pours I saw that made me go “oh wow, I want to do that!” For me, a big part of this art style is taking those big artistic risks and trying things that maybe shouldn’t work. Throwing it all in a cup or at the top of the canvas and seeing how it all shakes out, and that’s what this pour is. It’s also a look in to another artist’s life, and the fact that she referred to any of the attempts she made at this pour fails makes me understand my own art better in a strange way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and art is totally subjective, and those are two things I need to hold on to when I think about my own art and what I’d consider a “fail” pour.
Sara Wagner’s Tutorial for Color Theory Basics
This video/article has saved my life on more than one occasion. You think you know all about colors from your time in preschool, red and yellow make orange, red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors, etc. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This piece holds my hand through figuring out what will and won’t go together in a cup, where colors belong, what will pop, what will sink and turn to mud. It’s all there in one easy to follow break down, with a chart!
Deby Coles Tree Ring Pour
I just recently used this video as a guide for my first tree ring pour and it was so helpful and just what I needed to see to get up the courage to pour that pour. Deby Coles is basically our foremother in this community and I’ve learned a lot from her since I started. There are a lot of other resources for most other pour techniques on this blog but tree rings are a bit hard to find and follow. What I love about Deby’s is that she takes it step by step, shows us what she’s doing from every angle, and her product has that beautiful and distinct pattern.
Midge Pippel’s Butterfly Embellishment
You see plenty of embellishments, all different kinds, when it comes to acrylic pouring. I have a few under my belt myself. But this embellishment is one of a kind. It uses so many different elements and turns out so life like, it’s hard not to keep going back. There is beading and texture and so much more than you see from a commonplace embellishment. For me, Midge is the go to for embellishment inspiration in this community. I’m a long way off from being able to do what she does and seeing things in the paintings like she does, but these are definitely things to aspire to.
Steve Shaw’s Double Swipe
I think this has become one of my favorite and most useful pieces because in the very first paragraph he expresses his uncertainty when it comes to setting up a swipe. Swiping is one of my favorite techniques to use, but sometimes I do still falter before setting up those swipe colors. This is one of the videos I used as my training wheels to figure out the swipe and now I come back to it from time to time to remind myself that no one is ever certain about the project their about to undertake. It’s a how-to and a bit of reassurance all in one.
There are a ton of other wonderful, beautiful, helpful pieces on this blog from all parts of this community that I couldn’t include, but I hope you’ve got a few favorites of your own that keep the pour inspirations flowing!
PS Koz is new to the acrylic pouring game but she’s diving right in and has no intentions of looking back! A student of the universe, there is nothing this artist loves more than learning and trying new things. Her other hobbies include reading, foreign language, and salsa dancing.