I talked about acrylic pouring last week and in that post, I mentioned one of my current favorite art materials: Liquitex Pouring Medium . I thought for today’s post I would expand on that a bit.  I really (really!) like this stuff and I go through a shockingly large amount of it when I’m working on abstract pieces. It’s super satisfying, the way the paint mixes and flows when this medium is mixed in.

Pouring mediums dilute the paint to make it more fluid while retaining the color and binding properties of the undiluted paint. It also helps to prevent cracking and crazing of the thinned paint. Liquitex does warn that cracking and crazing can occur “when flow heights are very uneven” and they recommend that your poured surface is kept level as it dries. But I’ve never personally experienced and cracking and my poured surfaces are frequently Very unlevel!

The amount of paint versus pouring medium depends on the consistency of the paint you are using, but you typically don’t need a lot of paint to get a good, intense color. I just add some paint to a cup or container (I find the single-serve yogurt containers work well), then squeeze in some pouring medium and stir it gently. If it’s not fluid enough, I continue adding pouring medium until I get the consistency I want. Super easy and it’s very forgiving of the paint-to-medium ratio. I’ve honestly never had a mixture fail or cause any issues, and I’m definitely not at all precise in measuring (“Yeah, that looks good enough”).

As far as working with the mixed and thinned paint, I’ve used in with wet-on-wet layers and wet-on-dry layers on a flat surface as well as wet-on-wet pouring in drips and drops and streams all over some highly uneven surfaces. You can obtain a wide range of effects depending on how you apply it. I like pouring it in thin streams along the high points of my abstract pieces and allowing it to pool in the lower areas. Tilting and rotating the canvas allows the colors to mix and swirl in interesting and unpredictable ways. I used this particular technique in many of the pieces in my “Elementals” series.

Have you tried Liquitex Pouring Medium? What did you think? Have you tried any other types of pouring mediums? Tell me in the comments.

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