mediums — 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

Happy New Year, everybody!! Hope you've got your new year's resolutions in order. But to be honest, mine have never lasted past January.

Since I'm not in any way a professional artist, I don't have a dedicated studio space. I have a Pinterest board for one (check it out!), though!! I have so many dreams of a studio space, entirely dedicated to my art but they aren't reality just yet. So for this post, let me take you through the reality of my "studio".

So this is the set of drawers most of my supplies fit into. Ill take you into it but before that, a short disclaimer: most of this revolves around acrylic paint as thats my primary medium and some of my supplies are not currently in this (they're in a different city which doesnt help when you need them).

My pencils and drawing tablet sit on top of it. I dont own too many pencils; the top box are my faber-castell color pencils and the bottom box is a mixture of sketching pencils (8H - 8B) and charcoal pencils.

This drawer contains my brushes, paint pens, ink pads and my metal palette knives. It's essentially my primary tool drawer. I got the dividers at a kitchen/houshold supplies store.

Ok, this drawer is a little bit of a mess. It contains my plastic palette knives (they're bigger), smaller pots of paints (lots of strange colors), ink, tiny trial canvases, stands (to hold up wet work), a pot of Gouache (bottom left) and my business card making supplies. Yeah, its definitely a huge mess.

Finally, the last drawer which is meant to be a filing drawer but it really is perfect to store paint bottles and tubes. It also holds my flow aid and pouring mediums.

So, this a very incomplete post as it does not include the rest of my dry mediums, fixative sprays tc etc. But I hope you enjoyed this peek into my "organization".

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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