Jocastaart24
Bespoke, Museum-Quality Commissions

What Is Fluid Art

 

Fluid art painting, also known as acrylic pouring or flow art, is an abstract painting technique where fluid, free-flowing paints are poured, dripped, or swirled onto a surface rather than applied with a brush. The artist chooses a technique, layers the paint colours and moves the paint around the canvas, which paint blends to create an organic, abstract and individual compositions.  No two paintings are ever the same, even if the same process is undertaken, as the artist has limited control over the moving paint.  The artist uses their skill in planning the composition, mixing the paints, choosing the colour palette, producing a focal point, balance, harmony and flow within the painting.

 

Fluid art often produces and emotional response in the viewer, such as finding the painting calming or energising.  The viewer might also ‘see’ images or patterns within piece to which they attribute ideas, as humans often do when looking at things like clouds.  Each individual is likely to ‘see’ different things in a piece of fluid art and have their own individual emotional response to it.  Some viewers love fluid art others don’t, just like all other forms of art. 

 

How It Works

• Acrylic paints are thinned out using a pouring medium and/or water to achieve the desired consistency for the chosen technique. This alters the paint’s viscosity so it flows smoothly.  The density and opacity as well as the results of mixing the paint on the canvas (such as blue next to yellow will produce green, and a transparent paint will not show through an opaque paint) of each colour has to be taken into account when choosing colours, their layering and consistency.

 

Popular Pouring Techniques

• The Dirty Pour: Multiple colours are layered on top of each other into a single cup without mixing them. When poured out across a canvas it creates stunning, ribbon-like striations.

 

• The Flip Cup: Multiple colours of paint are layered in a cup, the canvas is placed on top of the cup, which is then flipped upside down. The cup is then lifted, allowing the paint to spread outward across the canvas, producing interesting patterns.

 

 

• The Ring Pour: Multiple colours of paint are again layered in a cup then swirled in a circle as the paint is poured onto the canvas.  It produces a pattern resembling the tree rings in wood.

 

• The Swipe: A layer of base paint is applied on to which lines or puddles of different paint colours are pored. A tool such as a damp paper towel, palette knife, a piece of flexible plastic or cardboard is then dragged across the top, creating wave-like patterns and shapes known as cells.  Sometimes a swipe activator is used on top coloured paints applied by using a palette knife, which is drawn across the colours, spreading then over the base coat and producing a greater number of cells and a lacing effect.

 

 

 

Creating Cells and Lacing

The creation of cells and lacing are often considered as defining features of fluid.  Cells are shapes in the paint that are often circular or oval, they appear as pops of colour and look like cells under a microscope.  Lacing looks more like placing a piece of lace on a different coloured background so the lines and patterns of the lace can be seen. Both cells and lacing form during the making of the painting due to the interaction of the pouring medium and paints themselves.  The artists choice of which paints and pouring mediums to use heavily influence what type of cells and lacing are produced.