final piece — Blog — Art is a Language

I have recently begun experimenting with Fluid Art and unfortunately discovered that its not as easy as it looks! I'm far from an expert, but here's my simple tutorial. It will probably change in the future, but I'll keep you guys updated!

This is a final piece; I'm going to take you through the process.

1. I first spray a thin coat of varnish on the canvas (make sure it's a stretched canvas) to allow the paint to move across it easily

2. I then mix the colors I want with flow aid, water and pouring medium. First mix the flow aid and water 20:1. Add this mixture and pouring medium to the paint until you've got enough paint and the drips are continuous streams. Below is more than enough to cover 40x40 cm.

3. For this painting I attempted to be more controlled so I poured the paint in a pattern and attempted to spread it without disturbing it. There's no right way to do it, you can pour them all into another cup and pour this, or flip the cup onto it (a dirty cup pour). To spread the paint simply tilt the canvas in what ever direction your want it to fall.

Below is what it looked like after I finished pouring and spreading.

4. I then added more detail by swirling the paint around. If you do it when it's wet the paint will Reform with the pattern you create but if you wait too long or move too much it will create a 'hole' in the surface. You can also use this method to correct any stray drips like the blue drop in the bottom left corner. Lift it out with a straight edge (some cardboard or a chisel tip rubber brush and move the surrounding paint to close over the gap.

And here is the final piece!! I added more detail almost exclusively in the center.

I've been watching a lot of tutorials and looking at a lot of fluid art pieces to come up with this technique but I'm still learning! So let me know if you have any suggestions! Comment below!

Shivani

This post may have a gloomy title but, I promise it won't be that bad! I'm trying to record my failures here so I can learn from them. So here's the development of my latest piece that really didn't work (but let me know what I could have done better!):

Putting the colors and textures together before you begin your piece is always a good idea. Thats what I did here. I even attempted to add streaks to the blocks of color but I quickly realised that did not fit with the rest of solid colors.

I then practiced the technique required. I used a palette knife that I cleaned before every stroke. This allowed me to realize that mixing colors would make the palette more interesting. But the lightest yellow would allow the background to show through.

This is the final piece that I eventually gave up on. I genuinely loved the color pallet and therefore background but the original plan included the 'swirls' overlayed. However, as I started to build it up it began to darken the background colors and become more of an eyesore. Perhaps if I had enlarged the design it may have worked together better. All in all, not my best work but I am still genuinely proud. The color pallet is one I will use again and I tried to bring life to my idea! So I thought I would write this post to make sure your failures don't go in the trash or in the back of your closet. Learn from them!

Shivani

Art is a Language is an online portfolio as well as store for Shivani Sarjan’s artwork; focusing on sharing development, processes and final works as well as how an amateur artist may accomplish these.

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