Have you seen the Dirty-pour acrylic technique?! I have to say, I couldn’t stop watching! I had to try it! Since I’ve been in my pumpkin craze, I wanted to use this technique to paint a pumpkin. I first saw it at Deliberately Creative and put my own spin on it.
All you need is a canvas, several colors of acrylic paint (including white), plastic cups, popsicle sticks, gloves, a pouring medium (optional) and water. First thing you want to do is pour each color of paint into its’ own cup (about 1/4 will do). Then add a pouring medium to each one (this helps the paint move around easily). I used about a 2:1 ratio of paint to medium (I used Liquitex pouring medium). I then stirred it up and added a little water to get the consistency I wanted (kind of like a salad dressing). There is no definite recipe for this; everybody does something different.
Once you get your individual paints like you want, start by pouring a white mixture onto your canvas covering the entire area. You can spread it with your hand or a paint brush. While it’s still wet, you can add a color to make the background interesting. I used a brown mixture of paint and with a popsicle stick, “drizzled” some lines on. Then I smeared the lines using an index card, starting at the bottom and pulling it gently up to the top of my canvas.
Then take an empty cup and starting with white, pour in a little of each color mixture that you want to use. Now you’re ready to pour it onto your canvas! I tried to make a pumpkin shape at the top as I poured.
Looks like I had too much white in my cup. That’s okay! I just went back and poured some of my orange mixture on top of the white. Holding your canvas, tilt it back and forth allowing the paint to run off your canvas. I then used my brown paint mixture and poured on a stem. I didn’t let my pumpkin dry before doing the stem; next time I will! This was a lot of fun! Check out my wooden pumpkin project here!
