Slowly, surely, I've been gathering supplies. I've been trying to be as judicious as possible, shopping around to find the best deals. When appropriate, I made my purchases at thrift stores, discount stores and craft stores. Today I got the last piece of the puzzle(s): canvases. I missed the best sale on 50% off canvases at Michaels, on value packs. There were still sales, just not on multi-packs. I also grabbed some cheap canvas-wrapped illustration boards from Wal-Mart too. To practice paint pouring, I needed to start on inexpensive substrates.
This compulsion to watch paint pouring videos for the last month had to end up here. There's no way I could have watched so much, and not actually tried it myself. I watch first thing in the morning over coffee. I fall asleep at night with the iPad autoplaying, and I have to wake up enough to shut it off in the wee hours of the morning. I already owned more tubes of paint than I was ever going to use before they seized up. For the first time, I feel like they won't go to waste. I needed this outlet before my window of opportunity closed on this collection of paint.
This evening, I mixed up a basic, student-level pouring medium to get me started, combining Elmer's Glue-All, Floetrol, and distilled water, and stored it in an old glass honey jar. I set up the concrete-mixing tub I picked up last week in my craft room, with a plastic tarp covering the whole center of the room. As I gathered and set up all of the tools and materials, I was practically breathless at how much prep work this took to get started for the very first time. I'll get faster at this with practice, but to start is labor intensive. I mixed up a rainbow of colors for my first ever pour, and layered them in a Solo cup, in what is colloquially referred to as a "dirty pour." Over a canvas board with a thin layer of white paint, tipped up slightly on one end, I slowly poured it out in one continuous ribbon, rocking it back and forth about an inch. I probably had enough paint for the next size up board, but I'm starting small on purpose.
It's obvious that I'm impatient with this sort of art. I couldn't wait to jump in to tilt and stretch the pours, every time I did it. It wasn't too terribly bad with the first one, that came out a little like a muddy, rainbow-colored feather. The second one looked like a photo of deep space. I definitely tilted that one too far, too fast. It's a bit of a wreck. I am keeping it, however, as a reminder to slow the heck down and not tip my canvas to 70 degrees to let the paint run off. The third one took two tries to accomplish. At first I just used the very last little bit of paint in the primary colors cups, plus a little white, with a black swipe over the top. It was a disaster, with not nearly enough paint. I scraped off everything I could, and started over. I mixed up fresh paint, put a hefty dollop of dimethicone-containing hair serum in each color, and tried again. Finally, I had the effect I had been dreaming of since before the surgery. This was worth waiting a week for. I got big, colorful cells, and I tilted the board much more slowly to stretch them. I have found my sweet spot. I'll be doing more of these, in all shapes and sizes.
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