Recently I have been getting ton of questions on improving fluid painting techniques from my students who go home and get to creating! The problem is that fluid painting has so many uncontrollable variables. I am going to be spending some time really isolating some of the variables so that we can understand them.
My first test was to try a new paint brand. In this I bought Sargent Art Acrylic Paint to test. It had a reasonable price point and good reviews. I used about water (about 30% of the volume) to thin it and here were my experiences.
Let's start with the cons, because if any of these are deal breakers, you don't need to read the prose:
1. This paint is tricky to get the consistency right. It doesn't flow the same as other paints. It is almost gelatinous, so you have to have a really good feel for thinning paint before trying this one.
2. The basic colors that the pack comes with lack vibrancy.
3. The paint doesn't react very well with the torch to create cells. So you need to make sure you get organic cells in your painting
The Pros:
1. Despite the lack of vibrancy in the stock colors, you can mix very beautiful colors and they dry almost just as bright as when they are wet.
2. Cells organically formed.
3. Colors didn't bleed together.
4. I didn't experience any cracking on any of the pieces we did.
Check out some footage from the experimentation. Nick also participated with me, this first video is one that we worked on together.
This second one I did solo and I didn't get as many cells. But I really like the rivers of color.
Here's the video footage of the paint with the torch and not much happening.
If you want to watch my full review check out my YouTube video:
If you want to buy the paint I tried I got mine from Amazon.
Go get your hands messy and get creative!