Acrylic Pouring Dip Technique: Relaxing Garden Vibes

Trying something new today. I’ve made paintings with the ‘Butterfly Technique’ in the past where I have dipped one canvas on top of another and made two near-identical paintings and I love those. See previous examples here and here. But today something a little bit different, where I will do a similar technique, but using only a single canvas. This is called a ‘dip’.

This is super easy. We will lay out some colors, lie a plastic sheet over the top, smush the paint around a little a life up the plastic to see what we get. This painting technique gives us much more control over the placement of our colors and the finished look we will get as a result. Even though we aren’t pouring the colors together, we can still get some pretty cells from where the paints meet and mingle, and through the lifting action of the plastic sheeting. This technique is clean to do, fun and suitable for kids and beginners too.

Materials used in this painting:
DecoArt Americana acrylic paints in – Primary Yellow, Sour Apple, Festive Green, Dioxazine Purple, Blue Bird, Bubblegum Pink and Titanium White
Floetrol
Treadmill silicone oil
Economy canvas
Plastic sheet (old ziploc bag)
Small paint mixing pots with lids
Polycrylic protective finish

Recipe:
The paints were mixed with Floetrol as needed for the right consistency, no water added. 2 drops of treadmill silicone oil per color approx.

Super! That is such a pretty painting, and a fun way to make an abstract landscape. I  had used a little too much paint and you can see on the right-hand side that the colors aren’t as distinct as on the left, because the paint was thicker and had mixed together a little more in the plastic smushing action. So learn from my mistake and don’t use as much paint. You will be smushing it about under the plastic sheeting to fill in any gaps so feel free to use less and in this case ‘less is more’ for sure.

Here’s a slideshow of photos of this painting, both wet and dry, and close-ups of the details.