How to paint water details with acrylic

Always Wanted To Learn How To Paint Water Realistically?

My process teaches you how to paint water, and really see water, in a whole new way.

Water is one of the most compelling subjects to paint, and yet it can all end so badly. The problem often is; where to start?

I wrestled with creating the illusion of fluidity, clarity and some semblance of realism for a long time.

Eventually I discovered a way of looking at water that allows us to recreate it in almost any circumstance.

The trick is to break it down into manageable pieces, rather than try and paint it in its entirety. When you understand how these pieces affect each other, learning how to paint water becomes much easier. You will find that you may look at water in an entirely different way.

Before we start, however, there are a couple of things I need to say. When painting something realistically there are two overriding skills needed, and particularly when learning to paint water:

This tutorial is primarily about the «details» I use when painting water.

The next point is that this strategy is not the only way, nor possibly the best way. But it works brilliantly for me, and hopefully will for you, as you learn how to represent water in your paintings.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into it!

When learning to paint water realistically, it is important to consider that the appearance of water is made up of four elements:

How to Thin Acrylic Paint: 3 Correct Ways & 3 Dont’s

Thinning acrylic paints may become a real headache for beginners and experienced artists. We need to thin paint to get better results in painting and the right method and thinning mixing ratio will come with experience, but I recommend you start learning and trying right now with my full guide.

To thin acrylic paint, you can add water, a thinner, an acrylic binder, a pouring medium, acetone, or rubbing alcohol. The most effective way is to use specially made thinners. The easiest but contradictory method is adding just water.There are also some ingredients that should be never used as thinner such as spirits even though people keep using them.

In this article, I will share with you the whole process of thinning acrylic paints depending on the medium, technique, and preferences. As manufacturers recommend special thinners, I will also provide you with the 14 best acrylic paint thinners and some extra tips to make your painting process more enjoyable.

Table of content for How to thin acrylic paint:

What does thinning acrylic paints mean?

Thinning acrylic paints – is a process of adding to acrylic paints water or any other medium which will slowly dissolve paint making it thinner as a result.

The thinning acrylic paint also creates lighter consistency and viscosity.

Are you supposed to thin acrylic paint?

We are supposed to thin acrylic paint when the viscosity seems too thick for us. Thinning acrylic paints help us get different consistency, colors, and effects (thinned acrylic paint may look like watercolor).

The thinning acrylic paints process can seem easy, but without proper experience and guidance, it could be difficult to achieve the desirable effects.

For a better understanding of why we need to thin acrylic paint and what do you thin acrylic paint with, you should know exactly what is acrylic paint and what are its main characteristics.

Acrylic paint composition:

One of the main characteristics of acrylic paint is its water-soluble property. Acrylic polymer emulsion is a binding and pigmenting agent that makes acrylic paint water-soluble and sensitive to thinning acrylic paints.

Remember this term – acrylic polymer emulsion – if you see acrylic polymer emulsion in the thinning medium composition, it means pigments will be bonded and permanently stay on your canvas and your paint will not peel. Water doesn’t contain any acrylic polymer emulsion.

What to use to thin acrylic paint?

We agree now that before painting we should thin our paint. What to use to thin acrylic paint? There are 2 most popular ways to thin acrylic paint: water and range of mediums.

In fact, many people, especially artists who worked with oil before, wonder if you can thin acrylic paint with alcohol, spirits, or acetone. Despite the popularity of thinning acrylic paints with water, some painters say that you should never use water to thin your paint. I will help you to see all the precautions to each method and help to choose the best method how to make acrylic paint thinner.

Thinning acrylic paints with water

Can you dilute acrylic paint with water? Yes, you can thin acrylic paint with water. Water is the most common and cheapest ingredient for thin acrylic paint. Water is the easiest way to thin acrylic paint because water affects the composition directly, more specifically – the binder, and slowly dissolves it. But this method is not highly recommended for beginners because even a slight over-pouring of water can potentially ruin the painting.

The right ratio for thinning with water depends on what effects you need and the surface you paint on.

The best way to thin acrylic paint with water is to mix 30-50% of the water with the paint (1:2 ratio).

Precautions:

Liquitex manufacturers in their official FAQ do not recommend water for thinning acrylic paint.

Thinning with acrylic mediums

The thinning medium method is the best way to thin acrylic paint for beginners because you don’t have to worry about the ideal ratio and eventual peeling of the paint. This approach is the most effective way to preserve your paintings over time.

There are several mediums that you can use to thin acrylic paint. Mediums still bond the pigment with the surface, increase UV resistance of the pain and help to achieve different effects, e.i.: watercolor look, glazing; matte, satin, or gloss finish effects; extended dry time; color extension; increased flexibility; additional cracks; shaped surface, etc.

The thinning mediums were designed to thin acrylic paint. Their only disadvantage is the price – they can be quite expensive. But if it will make your painting last longer or cost more, it is worth it, right?

What mediums I can use to thin acrylic paint:

Here, in one of the sections below, I sum up the best acrylic thinners for you with prices and notes.

Precautions

To thin acrylic paint with a binder

As we remember, a binder is a part of the acrylic paint composition. The binder assures waterproofness, gloss, and fast and even drying of the paint.

Using a binder as a thinning medium is a good decision because you will not have to think about the best ratio for mixing or worry about unbound paint. On the contrary, a binder can add more shine and gloss and will prevent paint from soaking into the surface.

The only precaution you should keep in mind is: do not to add more than 50% of acrylic binder to thin paint.

Acrylic binders you can use: Chroma Fusion I.A. Series Pro-Grade Binder Medium and PEBEO Studio Acrylics Auxiliaries, Bindex

Here, in one of the sections below, I sum up the best acrylic thinners for you with prices and notes.

Thinning acrylic paint with pouring medium

The pouring medium was specifically designed for acrylic pouring, but you can use it also for acrylic painting. The pouring medium improves the flow and does not affect pigments or color intensity.

To thin acrylic paint with pouring medium, you add 10% to 20% medium to your paint. Be aware that pouring medium makes the paint dry slower.

Pouring mediums you can use: Liquitex Professional Pouring Effects Medium, Golden Artist Colors Color Pouring Medium, DECOART Pouring Medium.

Here, in one of the sections below, I sum up the best acrylic thinners for you with prices and notes.

Thinning acrylic paint with spirits and paint thinners

Some artists prefer to use various chemical thinners for thinning acrylic paint. You can also try it with all precautions and strictly following manufacturers’ guidelines.

Spirits as thinning mediums act like solvents. Do not use too many chemical paint thinners in order not to damage the colors.

This is NOT a recommended thinning method for beginners. The best way to thin paint is to use mediums, not spirits.

Can you thin acrylic paint with alcohol?

You can thin water-based acrylic paint with isopropyl (rubbing alcohol). The recommended amount of alcohol you can use to dilute paint is up to 20%.

The use of alcohol will accelerate drying and can result in uneven application.

Thinning acrylic paint with alcohol is NOT a recommended thinning method.

Can you thin acrylic paint with mineral spirits?

You can NOT thin water-based acrylic paint with mineral spirits because they are petroleum-based and will significantly decrease paint adhesion. Thinning acrylic paint with mineral spirits is NOT a recommended thinning method for water-based paints.

Can you thin acrylic paint with acetone?

You can thin acrylic paint with acetone. The ratio is a 4:1 ratio of paint to acetone.

Thinning acrylic paint with acetone is NOT a recommended thinning method for a beginner.

Can you use white spirit to thin acrylic paint?

You can NOT thin water-based acrylic paint with white spirit. These two ingredients will not mix Thinning acrylic paint with white spirit is NOT a recommended thinning method for beginners.

How to thin acrylic paint

We went through why we thin acrylic paint, what you can potentially use to thin paint and now we move on to how to thin out acrylic paint. I suggest you the general guidelines and 3 specific cases of thinning:

I also have for your a quick and useful infographic, feel free to use it and print it. Below you will find detailed instructions for every method and a list of precautions, as well as the 14 best acrylic paint thinners.

How to thin acrylic paint

3. Check the consistency. Take your palette knife or squeezed brush and apply paint to check if the consistency is right for you.

4. Paint. If you’ve achieved the consistency you were looking for, start painting.

How to thin acrylic paint for spraying

Thinning acrylic paint for spraying is a key step to successful spraying. If you want to control the results, even application and paint consistency, you need to thin acrylic paint for spraying. You also should consider thinning when the weather makes your paint thicker (temperature, humidity, and air pressure).

The spraying techniques use different paints: oil-based, acrylic and latex are most popular. In fact, the thinning process will also depend on what paint you choose to use with a spray gun. I will not cover oil-based paints here because my experience and blog are focused on acrylic.

How to thin acrylic paint for spray gun

The best way to thin acrylic paint for a spray gun depends on the type of sprayer. The most common types are HVLP (High Volume, Low Pressure) paint guns, and airless spray guns.

Please, follow some easy recommendations on how to thin acrylic paint for the spray gun below.

HVLP (high volume, low pressure) paint gun

HVLP (High Volume, Low Pressure) paint gun is good for oil-based and latex paints. You thin acrylic paint for the HVLP gun with 10-30% water depending on your preferences.

If you use acrylic latex paint in a non-friendly environment, you can mix your paint with a paint conditioner without thinning. This will make your paints less sensitive to environmental factors and thinner. In any other case, do not use paint conditioner, because technically it is not thinner.

Do I need to thin paint for an airless sprayer?

If you use latex paint with an airless spray gun, you don’t really need to thin paint. It is still recommended, especially when you use small spraying systems. If you need to thin acrylic paint for an airless spray gun, add 20% water to the paint.

How to thin acrylic latex paint for spraying

Thinning acrylic latex paint for spraying is highly recommended, as latex paint itself is thick.

Thinning acrylic paint for airbrushing

Thinning acrylic paint for airbrushing is necessary to create a nice, smooth, and thin paint application. To thin acrylic paint for airbrushing you need to know the brand, the type of your airbrush, the sizes of needle and liquid nozzle, what air pressure use your type of airbrush, and be very specific about your plans for painting.

Thinning products for airbrushing come in different colors from transparent to opaque. It is a piece of important information because colored products can affect viscosity. You have to control the ratio for thinning:

Please, make a note that thick, not thinned, or not properly thinned acrylic paint can damage and slow the airbrush, and alter the spray pattern. Learn more about opacity here: 7 Ways How to Make Acrylics More Opaque & Full Opaque Colors List

What can I use to thin acrylic paint for airbrushing

With airbrushing you can simply use special airbrushing paints that already contain a thinner. Otherwise, there are 3 best options for thinning acrylic paint for airbrushing:

How to thin acrylic paint for airbrush with water

How to thin acrylic paint for airbrush with alcohol

Thinning acrylic craft paint for airbrushing with rubbing alcohol is an affordable way for everyone.

Using alcohol as a thinner has a side effect – an odor. Considering that, thin your paint in a well-aired room with gloves.

How to thin acrylic paint for airbrush with paint thinners

The best and most effective way to thin acrylic paint for airbrushes is to use paint thinners or reducers. Usually, manufacturers create the whole product line, including paints and paint thinners.

The easiest way for you is just to find the paint thinner produced by the brand of the paint you use. Plus, the manufacturer will usually have full instructions.

The cheapest way to thin acrylic paint for airbrushes is to make your own, homemade paint thinner.

Acrylic paint thinner for airbrush:

You can buy professional acrylic paint thinner for airbrush on Amazon and special art supplies online stores like Blick Art

Here are 3 best airbrush thinners with prices and useful notes:

Homemade acrylic airbrush thinner

To mix homemade acrylic airbrush thinner for water-based paint, you can use distilled water, Fantastik all-purpose cleaner, glycerine, and isopropyl alcohol. If you decide to make a DIY airbrush thinner, be aware of what each component does:

2 DIY acrylic paint thinner recipes:

Recipe #1: The easiest recipe is just to mix 3/4 of distilled water with 1/4 of Fantastik’s all-purpose cleaner.

Recipe #2: mix 2/3 of distilled water with 1/3 of isopropyl alcohol and add 1 drop of glycerine per every 50 ml of the thinning mixture, e.i. if you have 50 ml of isopropyl alcohol and 100 ml of water, your mixture is 150 ml and you add 3 drops of glycerine.

How to thin acrylic paint for pouring

The pouring medium was specifically designed for acrylic pouring, it improves the flow and does not affect pigments or color intensity.

The optimal ratio is 1:1 pouring medium to paint.

The best consistency is similar to honey.

Pouring mediums you can use: Liquitex Professional Pouring Effects Medium, Golden Artist Colors Color Pouring Medium, DECOART Pouring Medium, Floetrol.

Here, in one of the sections below, I sum up the best acrylic thinners for you with prices and notes.

14 Best acrylic paint thinners

Gently remind you that the best way is to choose paint thinner of the same brand as your paint. This is why I’ve tried to mention all popular and tested brands in the following table.

3 Extra Tips on how to paint with thinning paint

Sometimes, even if we had images in our heads or on sketches, the real painting, colors, and shades don’t look as we wanted.

If the results do not meet your preferences, try this:

Related questions

Does thinning paint change the color?

The thinning does not change the color. But if you thin paint with water, remember that water dilutes the paint and lightens its color. In this case, apply additional coats of paint.

How to soften hardened acrylic paint?

If your paint has fully dried, nothing will help. If you left your paint for a while and it became thicker and harder, try this:

To achieve the best results in acrylic painting check related posts:

Searching For Acrylic Painting Tutorials?

Look no further. Here is your large stash of FREE acrylic painting lessons!

There are many times when we’ve been stumped by a painting. At this point we either throw the offending image into the bin, vowing to never paint again……or start looking for solutions somewhere else.

Most of us don’t have a skilled artisan at our fingertips who is willing to step up and guide us though our paintings.

Luckily painting tutorials take lots of different forms, and there are thousands of them available. All have their pros and cons.

Click on any of the images below to learn how to paint these beautiful elements and scenes for yourself! (PS: Also, you can scroll to the bottom of the page for many more free tutorials for you to explore!)

Create Crystal Clear Water

Paint Clouds With Realism

Depth In Your Shadows

Rocks To Rock Your Socks

Trees With Light, Volume & Life

Fill Your Sunsets With Romance

Waves To Dive For (oh dear)

For starters there is your local library. This is free and may be wonderful, or it may be full of tragic dog-eared articles from the 1920’s which are not relevant to your arts practice today.

Doing a workshop can be a great idea. Having some idea of the tutor’s approach to painting tutorials (if you can) is worth doing. Some teachers out there are, how shall I say this. mind bendingly boring, or indescribably pretentious (wow, Mark, beat around the bush why don’t you). Some are also very stingy with their information. Often, though, it can be money well spent.

A magazine subscription is not a bad idea. There are many magazines dedicated to solving problems, but you may have to wait until your problem arises before you get to the gold.

Purchasing a DVD is a great idea! Choose your subject and/or problem area, and hopefully the tutor will help you solve your problems.

Searching specifically for the solution to your problem can very often yield some great painting tutorials, and forums can be useful in this regard. With forums you have the advantage of being able to ask your specific question and very often people will come back with (a variety of) answers.

Fundamentally, as painters who work with realism as a base, there are two major skill sets:

Firstly, your physical skills, including:

and so many more…..

The second most important thing is your perception or observation skills. This involves discovering all of the information that you need to create a convincing piece of artwork, for example:

в€љ How does the light hit a tree?
в€љ What gives that cloud depth in the sky?
в€љ What makes water look like water?
в€љ How are things affected by light?
в€љ What is the negative space doing?

and so much more…..

If, you feel comfortable with your brushwork, but don’t seem to be able to make the work convincing; there is probably some information missing. You need to learn to look more closely at your subject, to discover the subtlety & nuances that make or breaks it.

Go into the world and look around. Dissect it. Layer, upon layer. Make notes and observe. Discover your own painting tutorials.

Good painting tutorials will address both of those areas.

It’s important to note that you are not on your own. Someone out there somewhere has struggled with the same thing you are struggling with, and been victorious!

If you would like to support us by spending some actual money on our tutorial products, click here to visit the shop.

Have fun, and as always, chuck some paint around!

Have you always wanted to learn how to paint water realistically? My unique process teaches you how to paint water, and see water, in a whole new way.

Ever wanted to paint a beautiful, light filled beach landscape? Our free painting lessons will show you exactly how.

How to paint trees. Train your eyes to find the patterns. Then, train your brush to make the patterns, and watch your trees come to life.

We’ll investigate four basic concepts and skills to inject more light and life into your skyscapes.

The basis of most successful paintings is gradation. Learn how to paint a gradation smoothly & efficiently.

A simple formula for learning how to paint a mural.

Discover how landscape painting can be loads of fun, AND good for your soul.

When you discover the nuances, painting waves with life and movement is exciting, easier and so much fun.

Discover a simple and powerful strategy to uncomplicate the process of learning how to paint clouds.

Underwater or out of the water, understand simple patterns and processes behind painting realistic rocks.

Discover the amazing array of colours within shadow paintings, and the tricks to using them to create amazing paintings.

Uncover the transitions from luminous blues through to glorious golds. Learn which colours to add to your sunset painting. Discover where to put them to make your canvas sing.

Explore some simple tips and exercises to get you creating ocean landscapes with zing. Stuff you need to know.

Atmospheric and structural perspective in painting. What’s the difference? Why does it matter? What do you look for? And what is the point??

Prepare art to sell and do it right! Ideas to improve your changes, and some strategies to help avoid disappointment.

Explore 7 simple ways to make mixing color a dream.

Befriend some simple marbling techniques to create wonderful faux effects and add to your painting repertoire.

Use our practical color mixing guide to create your own set of go-to default paint recipes.

Explore some simple strategies to take your marine painting to the next level. Create depth and distance in your underwater masterpieces.

Go bananas painting tropical landscapes. Surrender to colour without losing your eye for subtlety.

Free recipe cards and corresponding video tutorials to kickstart you into action!

How to paint fabric. Break down the appearance of fabric, and rebuild it with simple straightforward painting techniques.

Learn some structures and processes to help simplify painting these incredible plants.

On the surface, greys and muted tones could seem a little dull. But nothing could be further from the truth. There is always unexpected colour, and a mood that can be exaggerated and highlighted. Perfect for making stormy paintings.

How to Prepare Acrylic Paint for Pouring

When I first started my acrylic pouring journey, I was flabbergasted by how many different ways people prepared their fluid acrylic paints? Some people had a whole system with multiple products and different ratios for each. None of the recommendations were wrong, per se, but they sure didn’t make sense for a beginner.

An easy way to prepare paint for an acrylic pour is to use one-part acrylic paint and mix it with two parts of Elmer’s Glue-All or Flood Floetrol. Add water a few drops at a time until you get a consistency where when elevated with a stirring stick to 1” off the surface the paint drips it off and creates a mound and disappears within a second.

As you can see, mixing acrylic pour paint doesn’t have to be complicated. We’ll go over everything you need to know including why we use more fluid paints, what consistencies are used in which techniques, common mistakes to avoid when mixing fluid acrylic paints, and more.

Table of Contents

Why does Acrylic Pour Paint Need Preparation?

Acrylic pouring is an art style where non-viscous or runny acrylic paints are combined and manipulated on a painting surface. The consistency of the paints allows for the paints to organically mix and meld creating a form of abstract art.

There are many different techniques to use with acrylic paint pouring including these basic and advanced techniques.

While there are some brands to do sell read-to-pour acrylic paints like Arteza and Artist’s Loft, many paints need to be mixed and prepared with water or other pouring mediums to get a consistency preferred by many artists.

Acrylic Pour Paint Consistency

The consistency of your finished production is arguably the most important part of preparing paint for fluid art. The right consistency has the most impact of how the paint will react and it one of the few things you can really control with acrylic paint pouring.

When you are first starting out, we recommend trying to achieve the same consistency of paint for all your first pours. This will give you a perfect starting point to understanding how changing the consistency affects the outcome of your artwork

How to Measure Consistency

There are a few ways to measure the consistency of your fluid acrylic paint. We’ll go over the two we think are the easiest to follow. After a lot of paint mixing, many artists say they learn to feel the right consistency in addition to using these types of methods.

The Drip Method

The most common one that we have seen is to dip your paint stick into the paint and pull it out about an inch over the top of the rest of the paint in the container. Too high and the paint will sink due to the increased height and too low will cause the paint to make a stalagmite/stalactite directly from the stick.

Let the paint drip back into the container and watch how it interacts with the top layer of paint. We want the paint to drip off the stirring stick and create a slight mount and then immediately disappear. That mound shouldn’t last for more than a second or two.

If the paint is thicker the mount will create multiple mounts on top of itself, kind of like an ice cream cone, and then gradually disappear in 3 or 4 seconds.

If the paint is too thin your paint streaming off the stir stick will look like it sinks under paint or it will immediately integrate into the surface without making a mound.

The Snake or Worm Method

This method is like the drip method in that you want to dip your stirring stick and pull it out of the paint to a height of about one inch also.

With this method, you want to weave a pattern like a work or a snake over the surface of the paint. Be sure to keep your one-inch distance from the paint surface.

The snake/worm pattern should last at least two seconds before you can’t see any noticeably raised sections.

If the paint is too thick it will be 4 or 5 seconds before it disappears. Too thin and it will almost immediately disappear.

Pouring Techniques by Consistency

Common Pouring Mediums

There is a plethora of pouring mediums that can be used with acrylic paint pouring. A pouring medium is simply a liquid additive that you use to extend the paint to help change its consistency without sacrificing its bonding (think dried plastic) qualities.

For the purpose of this article, we are going to focus on three of the cheapest and easiest pouring mediums to acquire: Elmer’s Glue-All, Flood Floetrol, and water.

Elmer’s Glue-All is just that, glue. The glue is white in liquid form but dries clear. It also has the quality of being very sticky and strong when dried. This paired with the fact that relatively easy to buy and it generally inexpensive is exactly the quality of a pouring medium that you should be looking for as a novice paint pourer.

Additional information about using Glue-All in our blog post Can You Use PVA Glue for Acrylic Pouring?

Flood Floetrol can be found in most hardware stores in the paint department. This product is mean to be used with paint to help cut down on brush marks and to thin out the paint slightly for use in a paint sprayer. This also has binders like the emulsions used with acrylic paints and will dry hard and strong.

Finally, water can be used as the medium to help thin the paint the consistency that we are looking for. Do not use more than about 30% water to paint ratio or else you will dilute the paint so much that it loses its strength and it will peel or warp when dried.

Beginner Pour Painting Recipes

Paint Ratios for Different Body Paints (Heavy, Soft, Fluid, Craft)

Acrylic paint comes in four main types: heavy body, soft body, fluid acrylic, and craft paint. Each one of the paint types might require a slight change to the recommended pouring recipes above.

Soft Body Acrylics

Most paints that come in metal or plastic tubes or larger containers are going to be soft body acrylics. Sometimes these are referred to as medium body acrylics. These look like warm honey went squeezing it out of the tube or scooping it out of the container. The paint ratios above will work well with medium body acrylics.

Heavy Body Acrylics

Heavy body paints are more like cold honey or toothpaste. They retain their shape when taken out of the container and don’t flatten out much. These paints usually have a higher pigment load (the amount of pigment per ounce of paint). When using heavy body acrylics, you probably want to up your ratio to more like 3:1, 4:1, or more with Glue-All and Floetrol.

Fluid Acrylics

Fluid acrylics are specially made to be runnier than soft or heavy body acrylics. Unfortunately for us, there are two main types of fluid acrylics. There are those that are highly pigmented from high-quality brands like Liquitex and Golden, and there are those budget fluid acrylics that are soft body paints with more water added to them.

The more expensive fluid acrylics can be mixed with a very high pouring medium to paint ratio, generally, 4:1 or more, while the less expensive fluid acrylics, like Artist’s Loft, should maintain the 2:1 ratio.

Craft Paint

Craft paint is generally a cheaper version of acrylic paint that is not very pigmented at all. We recommend cutting your ratios to 1:1 and with the glue mixture, upping the glue to water ratio to 70% glue to 30% water or ever 75% glue to 25% water.

If you do keep a higher medium to paint ratio your paints will be a lot less vibrant and will seem very dull compared to other colors prepared with the recommended ratios.

Looking for more information about acrylic paint brands? Read about the research we did to find the Best Paint for Acrylic Pouring?

Tips for Mixing Pour Paints

Why Use Distilled or Filtered Water?

You will see that many artists choose to use filtered or distilled water in their acrylic pours. The main reason for this is the cut down the change microbes get introduced to the painting.

Mold and mildew can form if paints dry very slowly or in a place where there is lots of moisture in the air. Any mixed paint that you store for later use will also tend to grow unwanted things more quickly with water from the faucet.

We don’t recommend you store any mixed paint for more than a few weeks, even when kept in airtight containers.

Get more details about things that can make acrylic paint go bad here.

Measure Your Ingredients

The last advice we want to give you when mixing your pourable acrylic paint is to measure your ratios, at least for the first few paintings that you do.

Measuring your paint will ensure that you are always getting the same consistency of paint and will be one less variable you need to worry about when trying to determine why one painting looked so different from another painting.

With experience, you might get to the point where you can mix your paints by feel, but until that time measuring is your friend.

Final Thoughts

Acrylic paint pouring is an amazingly fun art form to learn, even for those of us that are very left-brained and never thought we’d be doing anything remotely artistic like this. However, not getting the results we were hoping for can be one of the most demoralizing parts of acrylic pouring also

Getting the even consistency paint from day one can really limit some of the beginner mistakes that most acrylic pour artists make and help you do more quickly appreciate the artwork that you create.

I took up acrylic paint pouring a few years ago after binging fluid pours on Instagram and YouTube. I love that a left-brained technology nerd like myself can create amazing art. Hopefully this websites allows you to experience how fun acrylic paint pouring really is. See more about me here.

146 thoughts on “ How to Prepare Acrylic Paint for Pouring ”

Do you use silicone? What product do you use?

How to Paint a Face with Acrylics

This article was co-authored by Jeanine Hattas Wilson and by wikiHow staff writer, Kyle Hall. Jeanine Hattas Wilson is a Professional Painter and the President of Hattas Public Murals, Inc. With nearly 20 years of experience, Jeanine specializes in creating, overseeing, designing, and painting murals. Jeanine holds a BA in Advertising from Marquette University and a Studio Painting Minor from The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. She has studied at The Atelier Artien in Paris, France, Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, and under renowned artists such as Robert Liberace, Michael Siegel, and William Cochran. To date, Hattas Public Murals has painted nearly 5,000 commissioned works of art in homes and commercial and public spaces.

There are 16 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

This article has been viewed 41,137 times.

Many artists enjoy painting portraits with acrylic paint, which is easy to work with and cheaper than oil paint. To paint a face using acrylics, you’ll need a variety of paint colors so you can blend the right skin, eye, and hair color for your portrait. You’ll also want different size brushes to work with, as well as some water on hand for cleaning the brushes, thinning the paints, and keeping the paints from drying out. Before you get started, draw your subject’s face on paper or canvas. Then, paint one part of the face at a time, starting with the skin and filling in the eyes, mouth, nose, and hair as you go.