Acrylic Paint experiments

Since marbling paint had so many problems I tested out acrylic paints last time but with only limited colours. It worked out all right so today I did more tests on the acrylic+water mixture to see if it really would be suitable for our paint pyramid. First the three paints start off in the little plastic tray I've got. Then I mimic the motions that the robot would most likely make that would mix the paints together and drip/pour the paint on to a sheet of paper.


When it pours on to the page in the same spot in a continuous stream you get a lovely pattern that really reminds me of the ones seen in marbling paint, but thicker and richer. One thing I like about it is how the consistency of the paint with water still gives a really gooey effect in movement.


When the paint is dripped at a height of about one meter you get these thick, fantastic splashes with crazy patterns. This is one quality that the marbling paint does not possess because it is more fluid than gooey compared to acrylic paint.



One thing that might be bad about using acrylic is that it takes forever to dry because of how thick the layer of paint is. After about four hours since creation the larger splashes barely dried at all. The smaller splashes dried though. It is found that the pattern and the colours made at the moment of creation are retained throughout the extremely long drying process. As observed in the picture above, the water in the paint feathers at the edges as it is being absorbed in to the paper. I think this is an interesting feature because it makes the paint blob look like a cell, or a weirdly shaped planet with its city skyline.

After four hours the splatters dried slightly, a bit more than the giant paint blobs. These ones didn't feather into the page though. These experimental pieces were left at the studio overnight in a safe place to dry. Hopefully when we return tomorrow it would have dried by then. I think it would have, since I did something similar in high school but with a lot more paint and they dried over night. To speed up the drying process you could either use a hairdryer on a low setting. Low setting because if the wind is too strong you'll blow the pattern into a different direction which will ruin your original pattern. Or you can put it in the fridge because that sucks out the moisture in the paint.

Another alternative would be to hang the finished piece on the wall and allow the paint to snail off the page giving colourful tracks, thus creating yet another different piece of artwork.



As a group we decided that acrylic would be best because it has that gooey effect that we want while still retaining patterns.