With the move back to South Africa and the adjustment to a knew environment it has taken me a while to find my rhythm and mojo. Even now, 18 months down the line there is so much to do in the guesthouse, I struggle to find the continuous hours I need to complete a large body of art work.  I am highly motivated on one level, and am dying to find the time, but also find myself procrastinating when I do have the time to paint.  A bit of a creative block brought about by a country move and a dramatic lifestyle change! As great as it has been on one level, it has taken a toll on my creativity. To try to dislodge myself from my rut I decided to do something completely different, and experiment with acrylic pouring.

If you are wondering exactly what acrylic pouring is, it involves a different style of manipulating and working with polymer-based acrylic paints.  Acrylics differ from oil paints in that they have shorter drying times (as little as 10 minutes) and are soluble in water. These types of paint eliminate the need for turpentine, and can be applied directly onto canvas. Aside from painting with concentrated colour paints, acrylics can also be watered down to a consistency that can be poured or used for glazes. Pour paints are an innovative way to use acrylic paints in order to create an art piece. Instead of using tools like brushes or knives to create a piece of art, fluid paints can be poured directly onto the surface, and the canvas then tilted to move the paint around. Pouring paint allows for the colours to blend naturally as they come in contact with each other. This technique can be done with either one colour at a time, or with multiple paints to maximize colour blending.

The above is a very simplified description of what it involves, and there are so many more types of pours one can play with. I found some artists using this technique on YouTube and watched some of their methods before playing around with it myself.  Ann Osbourne does some fun work, and on her page are a number of other links to other artists that do acrylic pours using slightly different styles and methods.