From homes to commercial establishments and even the outdoors, works of art surround us literally everywhere. And for anyone who cares to check, this has been the case for hundreds if not thousands of years!
Whether you’re looking to personalize your home décor, add an aesthetic touch to your office, or are simply an advocate for creativity, art – specifically paintings – will almost always have room for you.
Of course, numerous forms of art exist, but fluid art has been enormously gaining popularity, perhaps because of the unique, organic nature of its results. There are also many different types and techniques of fluid art, which artists can use to always create something more vibrant than the previous one.
If you’re a lover of art by any means, read on to satisfy your curiosity!
Immersing Yourself into the Flow With Fluid Art
Fluid art is a form of painting where artists pour liquid pigments (often acrylics) onto canvases and manipulate them to create vibrant, original art pieces. Whether you’re a beginner or a novice artist, it’s always an exciting challenge to experiment with different materials and achieve unique results.
Knowing some basic yet specific techniques can help you get started – like controlling the flow of paints, working with wet on wet, or layering different mediums within the same piece. For example, combining oils and inks for bolder textures or 3D effects can be a great way to create unique art and let your creativity soar!
Furthermore, depending on your preference, you could explore using brushes to add texture to a canvas board or paper-based substrates. With more adventurous combinations like atomizing metallic flakes over wet media, the abstract visuals you can create are nothing short of dazzling.
Fluid Art Techniques Worth Trying
1. Get Creative with Acrylic Pouring
Acrylic pouring is an easy, fun, and free-flowing way to create exciting works of art. Fluid painting with acrylics involves the use of a liquid medium or ‘paint base’ thinned down with water. Here, a variety of techniques can be used, such as swiping, dipping, flipping, and even layering to achieve various effects in paint pours.
A good example of acrylic pouring is the floating technique, which involves pouring several colors directly over each other on a canvas material before gently tilting it off to one side. This allows the paint to flow together over the entire surface, creating beautiful cell designs that are unique each time!
2. Exploring the Magic of Marbling Art with Flow-Painting
Marbling art is another mesmerizingly beautiful form of fluid art. It combines acrylic paint and water with a flow improver or silicone to produce stunning marbled effects on your canvas. This technique allows artists to experiment with color and design, in a quest to create unique swirls, shapes, and textures that look as though they were painted by skilled hands!
What’s more, you can even create hand-tooled designs using this technique. For instance, press a beautifully crafted (plastic) item into the wet paint surface applied onto a piece of canvas – and watch in awe how unique patterns are formed! The possibilities are truly endless when exploring this fun technique.
3. Alcohol Ink Art: Using Alcohol Inks for Fluid Art Projects
Perfect for creating breathtaking works of art, alcohol inks are a vibrant, medium-viscosity fluid that’s commonly used in fluid art. Alcohol ink art allows endless experimentation with color, movement, and brush strokes to create unique effects – from dynamic abstract pieces to swirling textures. Also, you can use alcohol ink on various kinds of surfaces, including canvas and wood.
An example technique you can use is blowing. Simply start by applying the ink onto the support surface, and blow your breath over it through an empty tube. The air will push synthetic pigments around, slightly altering the design each time to create memorable works of art!
4. Creating Unique Abstract Paintings with Stamping & Swiping Strategies
Stamping and swiping are two wonderful ways to create unique abstract paintings that can be both captivating and soothing at the same time. Combining acrylic paints, pouring mediums, plastic cups or containers, and even silicone; you can begin exploring this fluid art technique.
- Stamping
Start by pouring down a base layer of learner paint onto the canvas. Once done, direct an old stamp or brush down into still-wet layers of paint. You can also soak the stamp or brush in new paint beforehand to create different effects.
- Swiping
On the other hand, swiping involves dragging a tool such as a popsicle stick, a brush handle, a plastic cup, or an old credit card over layered paint on your painting supports. The end results are unique every time and can always be manipulated as long as the paint is not yet dry.
5. Pour Painting: How to Create Amazing Cells in Pours
Pour painting is one of the essential techniques for creating spectacular abstract artworks. It’s similar in many ways to acrylic pouring. However, pour painting requires the use of a tool such as a paintbrush to spread the paint over the canvas surface, besides tilting and shaking.
By controlling how much or little paint you use during each pour, and how you spread it, you can create cells (or streams/bands) that bring even more life into your masterpiece!
Increasingly growing in popularity, fluid art is one of the most unique forms of art in the painting world. What makes it even more interesting is that it has little to no rules, and the results are almost always unique. If you’re interested in pursuing this exciting form of painting, the above few pointers can come in handy.