Unconventional Ocean Pour
How to make an acrylic pouring artwork if you don’t have acrylic paints or canvas? Watch me creating this ocean wave pour with scrap materials and leftover house paints.
This is how I did it:
- I put my board on the flat surface. I should have checked if it’s leveled but I didn’t and it resulted in paint sliding over on one side ever so slightly later in the process.
- I mixed my paint with floetrol. I haven’t measured the ratio. I just eyeballed it to make all my colors pretty fluid and roughly the same consistency.
- I poured the paint alternating darker colors and lighter colors hoping that they will mix in the right way and will look like an ocean.
- I poured my white at the bottom of the composition and swiped from the bottom up, from white to blue.
- I used thin waxed paper to swipe with and it actually worked very well.
- I liked the cells that immediately appeared. But there were some empty spots where the board showed through. So I just filled them with a little bit of paint.
- I tried to stretch the cells by tilting the board. But it didn’t quite work because house paints are thicker than acrylics and the surface of the board is very uneven.
- Then I decided to create a more organic look of foam splashing on the beach. So I dripped some white paint along the edge of the composition. And I liked the way it looked!
- I did a thick coat of clear epoxy. It took a couple of days to dry and turned out not too shabby!
- I used the recycled Ikea spare part to build the frame.
- Unfortunately, the particle board I used wasn’t quite square. Your eye can’t really see it but it was enough to complicate the frame building.
- To hide imperfections, I decided to go with a simple box frame cutting the wood planks individually for each side of the painting.
- After I cut 4 planks, I sanded the ends lightly to remove splinters.
- Then I glued two planks to the shorter sides of the board, applying an even layer of wood glue both to the plank and to the side of the board.
- I secured them with the painter’s tape and left them to dry overnight.
- The next day, I repeated the process for the longer sides.
- When it all dried, I filled the gaps with wood putty. And yes, wood glue is very strong and holds the frame and the picture together very well.
- I wanted to paint my frame white. So I taped inside the frame with masking tape to protect the ocean. And started painting the frame.
- I did three coats of the same white paint I used for the ocean pour. I let each coat dry for at least an hour and sanded with 220 grit sandpaper in between each coat.
- When I removed masking tape I found that paint bled on the edges. So I just cleaned it with a damp cloth wrapped around a putty knife.
- It’s time to make a clean backing with some craft paper.
- I traced the frame on the craft paper and cut out a perfect rectangle. Well, mostly perfect…
- I applied the same wood glue all over the back of the painting and glued the paper on. I flipped the painting to let it dry under its own weight.
- After it’s dried, it’s time to attach the hardware.
- I hammered the hardware into the particle board below the frame, to lift the weight off of the frame. I used very short nails to make sure they don’t poke through the ocean.
- Our beautiful ocean pour artwork is done!
This one-of-a-kind artwork is available in my Etsy shop
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