My 2018 – This is My Hobby – Acrylic Fluid Art Project

By: Rickie O. Pauley (a.k.a. @ Lymmerik)

I have had many hobbies over the years, but early this year, in 2018, I stumbled across a very different kind of painting video while watching YouTube videos about painting; this was not traditional brush and canvas painting. It is paint pouring.

Rainbow Flag by Rickie O. Pauley (a.k.a. @Lymmerik)

I was mesmerized by the video and watched several hundred over the next few days. I rushed out and bought some acrylic paints, and new canvases and so forth. I set up shop and painted four or five painting in a row. This led to an addiction of sorts, and has, in the past 2 months, become engrained in my brain. I was hooked immediately!

Let me back up just a bit.

In my past, I was never able to draw or paint, but the alluring aspect of painting always intrigued my imagination and sparked many attempts at the hobby. I couldn’t tell you the number of canvases that I ruined with attempt after attempt.
I have canvases with layer after layer of attempted art projects covered over by the next attempt and one after another the canvases thickened with paint.

I finally found a way to paint without structure with this method. Finally!

My Acrylic Fluid Art Project for 2018 is to video my process of paint pouring and upload the videos to DTube and YouTube.

Winter Flight by Rickie O. Pauley (a.k.a. @Lymmerik)

Here is an example of one of the process of painting the Owl above, it is called Winter Flight

I can’t convey to you the satisfaction I get with my newfound hobby. It is beyond passion, it is almost desire. I feel a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment when a new painting is done and ready to be framed.

This hobby is strictly mine, I don’t know anyone else painting with this method, nor have I ever known anyone else that painted like this. I am truly like a kid with a new toy. I have found that I feel better after I play in the paints. I can relax completely after finishing a new painting.

This project – Acrylic Fluid Art Project – was born out of a desire to create, just as my pottery satisfies, so too does this project. The project has already take over my bedroom and will soon have to be moved into its own room so that I can create more pieces. I am quickly running out of wall space to hang them too!

I am a potter as well, but creating ceramic pottery it is such a lengthy process just to get a cup, mug, or bowl from clay to glaze fired and finished that much of the passion is lost in the process. But I digress.

Acrylic Fluid Art is a paint pouring method that almost creates itself, I am just the machine that readies the canvas, mixes the paints, pours it out on the canvas, and spreads it out to the edges. And I am happy to do so! Then the magic happens, it creates cells and streaks, pretty much all on its own as it dries.

Outer Space by: Rickie O. Pauley (a.k.a. @Lymmerik)

I never tire of this painting process. It takes less than an hour, start to finish, to complete a painting and I spend several hours a week creating new paintings. What’s not to like?

The process is quite simple, but there are many, many methods and cross methods to try.

The puddle pour method; pouring puddles of paint in layers of different colors and tilting the canvas to make the paints flow to cover the canvas. This stretches and elongates the puddles into shapes of varying degrees.

The dirty cup pour method; pouring various colors of paint into a plastic cup in layers and pouring freehand onto the canvas to cover it completely. This causes cells and lines to form as the paint flows to the edges of the canvas.

The flip cup method; pouring various colors of paint into a cup in layers and flipping the cup upside down onto the canvas and releasing the paint to flow out and cover the canvas. This is the most interesting of the pours. The paint on the bottom of the cup is now on top and the paint on the top of the cup is now on the bottom, but the paints have varying degrees of specific gravity and sink through or rise through the other paints. This process leaves the imagination wondering ‘how does that happen?’

I could go on and on, but these three methods leave the most interesting designs on the canvases. Unfortunately, I have not yet taken pictures of each process; and at this time I have not taken video of each painting that I have completed, but you can watch the various methods on YouTube. Just search for fluid art, acrylic pouring, dirty cup painting, etc.

The thing with this project is that your mind is cleared and relaxed, your eyes widen with every new creation as it pours forth onto the canvas. There is no planning the outcome, only the colors. Every painting is uniquely different and there is no recreating an exact replica of any one of them.

If I had to explain the Acrylic Fluid Art Project process to an extra-terrestrial being, I would surely be taken back to their planet for mental evaluation. Do extra-terrestrials create? Do they have hobbies? Would paint on their planet be of different colors than here on Earth? Ummm…?

Quirky Cosmos by: Rickie O. Pauley (a.k.a. @Lymmerik)

What made this real for me was creating my very first painting. Once the paint was on the canvas, I stood there with my mouth open watching the paint colors flow across the canvas and I actually marveled at the outcome; not in a vain way, but in the way that a two-year-old might wonder how it happens. I was in awe.

There are many ideas that I have in my head of what to try next with my painting project. I want to be inventive and create new processes and methods. I want to find ways of creating new paintings more abstractly and at the same time more structured. My quest continues.