(4) Fluid Bloom/Sheleeart Technique - using products available in the UK/Europe

hello everybody um today i'm going to do a video on how to prepare your paints and mix mixture paints for the shelly art slash fluid bloom technique this is my version of it so um i hope you can bear with me now this technique is fabulous really is and yields them just amazing results however the ingredients original ingredients used with this technique was sourced in australia because that's where the lovely shelley lives so it's kind of gone worldwide um i think most of you poor is out there would have heard of it by now so what i'm going to try and do is i'm going to try i'm going to prepare the the recipe in line with the ingredients that are available to us here in the uk and perhaps in other parts of europe all right so any of you guys um watching in the us perhaps or other parts of the world um it's still quite difficult because it this is this is the downside of this technique in my opinion you can't always get the exact ingredients and they all vary worldwide depending on where you are so um you know you might benefit from the actual consistency of the paints watching that if you aren't in the uk you might be able to get the ingredients up i'm really not sure they vary all over the world which is a bit of a pain but i'm going to work with what is available to me in little old jersey in the channel islands which is just off the uk so we're classed as uk all right now this is completely different from the dutch pool it's um in fact the complete opposite whereas if you do the dutch paw you're working with paint and water for 90 percent of the time you may add a bit of flow troll if you want you don't have to at all however this one is a completely different science and i mean science because you're working with lots of different products to get the results you want and it can be a little bit frustrating and i did take the course it's wonderful however you need to practice this to get it right there's so many different um methods of doing this there's so many things that can go wrong with this but once you get it right and that means practicing it means you have to practice getting your paid consistency right um your cell activator right um the products and most importantly how you blow that selector out so activate it out over the colors okay so i'm now going to um start with preparing the pillow or base but it's referred to in this technique as the pillow completely opposite consistency of a dutch pool it's a lot thicker all right now another thing i'd like to point out when you start with this technique please start small because what i've found by doing this is i can probably take it to an eight by eight canvas or mdf wood circle or a six by six tile and that's it because unless you've got one of those spinning contraptions that a lot of people use and they do work well depends what kind of result you want but if you want to maintain that beautiful cell structure that's created with this technique you kind of you kind of have to go stay on the small side so just for the sake of this video okay to show you how to mix the paints i've just got myself a small 6x6 mdf would circle so what i do is i buy a sheet of ndf okay it's just it's just um fabricated wood and i buy a sheet from bq our local um diy store and i give it to my dad it's wonderful and he cuts out the circles for me all right but i'm sure you can buy these probably already cut them out amazon are we back all right so we're just going to use that and i've got it resting on just a little pot you'll get popped dessert there you go okay so these are the ingredients that i use for the pillow we're going to start with the pillow this might be a lengthy video because it is like a science lesson believe me it really is you will have a degree in science after you've learned this technique um now i normally and with me it's very heavy i just bought this this is what i use for my pillow it's valspar brilliant white interior walls and ceiling silk okay it's quite a thick paint and that's what you want you do need to however you do need to stir it a lot because what you do get with this or what we do over here i don't think i've got a friend in canada and the base she uses it's beautiful i'm not sure which one it is it's a lovely pamela and pamela radwin she's a fantastic artist in her own right hi pamela anyway this one does have a lot of gassy bubbles in it so when you actually go to pour you just see all these bubbles everywhere and it's really frustrating because when you start to pour and stretch those that that bloom out all these little what you call is referred to in the technique is measles start to appear and it is not very nice we've come up we've tried to come up with all sorts of different um ways of getting rid of them and i think the most i think the most successful one so far is is to actually when you buy it okay give it a good mix okay i've now decided to shake it all up because at the top when you open the tin there's a liquid that sits on the top which separates from the actual paint so i give it a good stir so um if you can do that that's great and then i decant some paint i'll show you from there and i pour it into a jug and i just put a plastic lid over it you can put it in anything yogurt pop or yogurt pops anything just decant some and let it sit i know wait for it about a week to two weeks for those air bubbles to release okay i know it's i'm not very good at waiting on things i haven't got the patience this is why i get a little bit frustrated but for this technique you just have to if you want good results however i'm going to work with an alternative which as we have all kind of worked on this in our uk group and instead i'm using my x2 free flow from specialist crafts ready to pour acrylic paint okay it's too thin you can't use it directly from the bottle okay so this is where it's the opposite of the dutch port it's too thin so what i'm doing i'm mixing it with wait for it it's pbo studio acrylics bindex okay this helps stabilize the paint okay and it does make it thicker you don't need a lot all right i'll show you so you can get all this on amazon now this technique isn't necessarily cheap um because we have had to source um a lot of these ingredients from overseas and that's why it can get a little bit costly but hopefully the more we practice and the more we come together with all our different bits of information and knowledge from each other and the more we find out after trying trial and error what we can use as alternatives all right so okay i'm going to pull this pillow i'm going to make it up i'm going to just pour in a jug you don't need a lot of paint for it okay so let's start with i haven't got a lot of this left actually so i hope i can get enough out so it's quite it's quite thin let me show you what i mean when i say when i say thin i mean it's just a pouring it's thickish okay still runs off the stick nice and smooth but it doesn't really have many bubbles in okay unlike the wall paint the house paint but it's still still too thin for this technique so i'm going to add you don't actually need much of this a pbo bindex to it now this is a lot of this technique people say oh can i have the exact ratio and the measurement i don't i don't really do that ratio thing i eyeball it and i'll show you uh the consistency after i'll try to so you just tip a bit in okay then i'm going to mix that up give it a nice mix don't go mad if you don't want to get too many air bubbles to from all the stirring you want it to be quite thick because you want it to sit like they call it the pillow so it's sort of puffed up okay i actually think that's enough i've probably done it too thick now yeah it's okay there wasn't much so it's still it's not you can't really tell when i pour it out you'll see it's like um trying to think of a consistency it does leave a trail most definitely and it takes a good say probably about good 30 seconds for that trail to disappear back into the paint okay um trying to compare it to something i guess a bit like thick double cream anyway you'll see when i pour it so that's that done okay so that is for the sake of having to wait for the other house paint the bubbles to release i'm using this okay so it's the x2 acrylic mixed with the pbo bindex so you can get rid of those put those out the way right so that's my pillow now this is the paint part that i really don't like doing um this is mixing your colors with the pouring medium now the pouring medium that shelley has in the u.s i think it's called clever pronounce it toberman's tobins something like that yes untinted base i'm just gonna have some water excuse me it's quite warm today again um it's fabulous and it's literally untinted so you can add paint to it it doesn't cloudy it or make it dull okay whereas i suppose the one we've got closest to that that everybody appears to be using in the uk is better get this right there when you're going into being cute this is where i get mine from it is valspar wood and metal v700 blend okay and the most important thing is it is the c base because there's a b as well you want the c all right so it can take dark colors and it is um an interior gloss gloss okay i'll puddle the list in the description i don't like using this because it stinks so i've got to be very careful because i do get headaches and this stuff's quite potent so just for the sake of this video i'm going to not wear a mask but i do normally wear a mask when i'm mixing these paints until when it comes out to actually blow you of course you can't wear a mask so yeah take the lid off now this is where this is a tablespoon okay so i'm going to pour some in horrible it's about a tablespoon here see how i go with that i might as well do it for all the colors while i'm at it you might need a little bit bit more it's depending on the brand of paint you use somewhat thinner and thicker than others so how many colors have i got um this isn't cheap either by the way this it's about 25 i think for a pot so i'm using green green i need another one okay so now i've filled up that away look there all four little pots with a tablespoon probably just under of the valspar wood and metal blend b700 interior gloss base c okay next to go into the mix this um apparently helps with cells this is the um chroma's joe sonja gloss varnish polyurethane water-based okay now there is a shop the lovely lin has the shop in the uk so you just need to have a look at joe sonya.com.uk if you want to get some of this and you can order it what i do i eyeball this as well i literally put a little one about two drops two drops that's it don't need much of that this is also quite strong smell it's it will all this would be it's varnish okay it's got polyurethane as well polyurethane base varnish always do smell do not like it make sure you're working well ventilated area for goodness sake windows open doors open and possibly a mask so i'm just going to quickly just mix that around i do add water if i need to but these paints are a lot thicker so here we go colors i'm going to add to the pouring medium oh this is deriving matisse australian yellow green i'm going to try and copy the one that i've just posted on the various facebook groups which i had um it was on a square six by six i think tile which i had um scanned i scanned it to a high resolution this is what i do with all of these shelly technique ones um i never very rarely do i sell the originals if i sell the originals it's normally on a um a tile and i put that within a resin it then i put it in a shadow box so it's nicely framed but most of the time i just scan them so i do them a lot on just normal tiles ceramic tiles scan it to a high resolution dpi 600 so i've got a box down to print a scanner here canon and then i email that file send it off that image to my local gallery who's also the chap that works there is fantastic he does some amazing framing work and he will then print it and then it can go up to this is why you need a very good high quality image it's much better to take um an image on a scanner as opposed to using your phone because i think a lot of phones these iphones i think only go up to something like a 72 dpi i i've got a 600 dpi scanner i can go to which is great so the bigger you go it retains its quality and it's a good image okay so yeah i managed to get um i posted it recently it was a three foot square um incredible what you would think about it came from a six and six inch tile a three foot square stretched canvas it looks awesome and i'll be honest with you they've actually been very successful um selling wise people just love it because they're so unique you know so guys don't worry about it if you do it on one of these if you do it on a tile just get it scanned and then get it blown up right so i'm going to add my first color so i'm just going to put a squirt of this this is actually very highly pigmented whatever you call it high pigment i'm just going to mix it up and it's good that it's high pigment because sometimes with this actual valve spa pouring medium it can dull the colors look really beautiful let's see if i can put the light on show with me a second working let's have a look if you can get it a bit closer it's very very thick let me just try and mix that all in that's all the pouring medium on the edges of the cup so this is very thick and that's what you want hold on i'd say this technique out of all the pouring techniques uses the thickest consistency unlike the dutch paw which uses the thinnest consistency okay it's like that gloopy all right can you get that it's gloopy there so that's one color because these paints have got to be kind of thick enough really just withstand that pillow so they don't sink next i'm using a matisse to riven matisse flow australian green sap we've got a bit of a zesty theme going on here i didn't get any paint out of here splodge out there i do find this bit incredibly boring i really can't stand mixing these paints together this is why i do like the dutch porks it's just water and paint this is all a bit the ball is to be honest but if you get it right it does like i say you have some beautiful results very unique unique gorgeous looking cells all right that's had a good mix i should just get the lighter view so it's see how thick that is yeah you got it okay next i'm going to add sand good old sand i love this this goes in a lot of my neutral pools i've been quite successful with the neutral pores because people like neutral colors for the homes tends to sort of lend itself well to home interiors okay so i'm just going to mix that one up as well next bit of gold this time i'm using my specialist kraft gold let me just switch that off it is artist acrylics specialist crafts again but this time it's x6 not x2 which means it's thicker okay because it's premium it's called premium not free flow x6 okay this doesn't when i first saw this i thought this is gold this doesn't look very vibrant or very metallic but when you open it i'll show you it's beautiful beautiful i wonder let me put the light on again it's just incredible quite thick though okay so i'm just going to mix a bit of that in i will show you i'm just going to get a bit like that on the stick and mix it into my pouring medium so you're just mixing all your colors now this is where i find i do have a bit of a problem with this pouring meat this actual pouring medium valve spot when i'm using the metallics okay it look i'll tell you what it does now people do use pigments don't even get me started on those okay they have driven me insane i still don't like them um i won't use them i won't use them in this technique i don't actually use them in any technique right but that's just me some people have great success depends if you're if you're able to get the right ingredients an icon look this is gold and look at this it's not working it's just gone dull dull dull so i'm not going to use it so we're going to suck the gold in this so this is where i suppose you can some if you can get the right gold i have got another one so just bear with me a second see if i can do anything with that [Music] this is nice studio acrylics pbo and this is um rich gold so i might just have a little go and see if i can if that makes any difference by introducing that so just bear with me a second and see if i can if that makes any difference to the mixture um yeah i guess it smells a bit still not fantastic to be honest but bung a bit of it in and see what happens it's actually not too thick now so you can either add a little bit more of your valve spot if it goes a bit thick or i add a bit of water just a little bit of water don't like it it's just a little bit um too thick at the moment so let's try a bit more not sure about that to be honest okay last color oh this is boring this mixing of colors i'm just going to get another glass i'm going to mix the black so i'm using this amsterdam acrylic standard series oxide black the paint's out the way now we've got the exciting bit i should put everything away otherwise a lid on that valve spot it's very stinky and yuck just gonna give this spoon i'm using this tablespoon a bit of a clean because we do not want to get this varnish into our cell activator cell activator i mean if you'd have asked me a year ago what's the activator was i'd be like oh god it sounds like something out of a science lab or hospital all these new techniques i've learned there's new words and phrases pillow cell activator flingy blooms right okay now this stuff that i'm going to show you now you probably know what it is god is controversial is the aussie flow troll okay i am not going to lie i don't like any of my videos i'm very honest this stuff aussie flood floetrol it's not aussie it's just flood floating acrylic paint and stain conditioner sorry it's out of focus there um does the job with regard to getting the cells okay it just does all right you can um you can try and use just the acrylic paint which i'm going to mix with it in a minute by itself and with water you do get some success just using the amsterdam so this is what i'll be mixing it with this stuff is fantastic amsterdam acrylics standard series titanium white okay this and this make your cell activator this alone with water can also make a cell activator but this is only in my opinion be careful what i say here because this is such a controversial technique at times shouldn't be i mean arts art you should be having fun you know everybody should just have fun and chill out get all heavy about it this stuff's great if you um mix it with water alone for your cell activator however if you start to go too big and i'm only using a six inch canvas um substrate here piece of wood if you start to go bigger that's when the structure of the cells start to break away okay they start to split up and break so i am going to use votron now i get this i get mine okay i'll post a link in the description from ebay okay this comes all the way from aussie i can't believe that i do this really it's absolutely crazy now this is a 500 milliliters it's a little cute little bottle it costs me and postage as well for this probably around about 23 24 pounds okay but this lasts lasts for ages okay you can get hundreds and hundreds of pieces out of this in case you don't need a lot and you can you can actually save your cell activator all right i mean all these paints are mixed up today i'll probably make about another three pieces all right so here we go now this should run off the stick in a thin stream so i'm going to show you exactly what i mean here to get the right consistency so for example the pillow should be the thickest part okay the paints should be next slightly thinner than the pillow consistency and the ca should be thinner the thinnest i already have so what i'm gonna do is of course like gold does this you don't want to waste any of it it's my little yogurt glass pot i'm going to pour a tablespoon into there this smells as well i don't like to be honest i don't like using all these chemicals and i'm going to pour another teaspoon all together it's 20 milliliters 20 mil so tablespoon in a half or something 20 mil all right then i'm going to give my titanium and i'm going to add a teaspoon oh my god this is half a teaspoon i keep losing these these things are great i don't know where they will go so this is half a teaspoon very thick into that so i'm going to add a little bit more it's about a teaspoon and level off okay that's done let's get that out of the way all right and now you have to give this a really good stir we're actually going to mix all that paint in to the australian flow troll just keep stirring and stirring so it all sort of mixes well just down the sides and everything now i know we can get um something called overtroll in the uk and we can also get flood flow troll which is the american version okay however the ingredients differ completely from the aussie one i think the difference is the australian one contains a stain wood conditioner of salt um i don't know really the science behind it i have checked it out before but i can't really be bothered but i just know that this works to get the cells and you know like i said you can just use the titanium white and water alone because that does also produce cells but this stuff does the job okay so i'm giving it a good mix really good mix let's have a look there you go ready it's running off and get a bit more light for you guys here yeah it's running off it's thin it's thin it's a bit like the um dutch pool base and it kind of bounces back off the stick it's something i'll keep getting out of focus sorry i'm not looking at the screen all right i'm trying to show you guys see how it sort of springs back a bit it's obviously the wonderful stuff that's in there elasticity of it okay so we're ready okay now the thumb all right so we've done dealt with the pillow we've dealt with the pouring meeting and mixing of paints we've dealt with the cell activator now i'm using a white cell activator here but you can equally use a black one which produces some awesome results okay i use um the uh where is it i lost it for the black i use that golden carbon black okay it is thicker so you might need a little bit more of the flow troll and add a bit of water if you want but as long as it's running off the um stick okay now i'm using like i say i would probably be more confident if i was using my house paint okay my valspar silk green base as opposed to my specialist crafts acrylic normal white and pbo but like i said i've only just bought some more the uh the wall paint and it needs to settle to get rid of those bubbles because it would just be awful so i'm going to try with this okay this mixture to now blow out the bloom now once you've put your your pillow down you need to put your paints down in a puddle you don't need much at all all right tiny little amounts i'll show you you need to be kind of quick all right because you don't want those colors sinking into the pillow because it's hard enough to blow this damn thing out as it is all right so anyway we're gonna give it a go and this might not come out like my first one this is another thing annoying about this acrylic pouring malarkey you can never very rarely get the same result the next time you think oh wow i love it i love i'm going to do another one and it's like yuck or you forget the paint order all the paints you've used and you're guessing so this is just purely to see if we can get some nice cells let me see if this is thick enough and see nice sort of creamy yellow you don't need to take it all to the edge there there you go see that i can see a few bubbles in there because i'm mixing it good idea really would be to let your paint sit for a while if it's a new can puddle see puddle pillow now we're going to lay the colors on top so i don't know what order i did anything let's just try this so a little bit like that just dropped in the center okay so there's the first one which is the um yellow green and then we're going to use the sap green these are the driven matties paints just blob a bit of that on top like so just take away you can see how thick they are because it does take a while for it to um leave the stick a little bit of the sand a little bit too thick that one i think okay yeah that's too thick a little bit of the black for contrast which mixed with the sand might come out like a sort of gray color you don't need much ah i don't know about this gold i'll put a tiny bit on but i'm not really happy about it a tiny wee bit on more than i expected right now we're going to put the cell activators let me show you there you go it's a little move this down a bit better not because i'll probably fall off it's just a little puddle of colors i've got to get working because it's already sinking in then i just put a blob so to do a circular motion with the stick just enough to cover it okay now when we blow it up don't blow directly straight down hard okay you need to get you need to be able to get the cell activator to move over the colors so my head sort of moves a bit like this okay take a deep breath this is where i need to pass out doing this ready blowing down but gentle so you can already see some sounds coming up there move it around next corner move it around make sure you're moving that color over okay you're trying to move push that with your blow over the colors okay and then then what i do is i blow out each little corner [Music] so you get a bit of color okay here okay let me just wipe my hands now i can see some cells popping up give it a second to see what pops up in the middle the center bit where the ca has been sitting can tend to get stuck so are you wait give it a bit of time before you start to um tilt it all right to get your composition okay give it some time and then i will wrap it a couple of times to try and get it to move this bloody technique i tell you sorry can take forever and i mean forever to get from one corner to the other and i keep turning it around so i can get those petals where they should be so there you go i'm going to bring you in up close to the finished piece okay there's all your beautiful cells there's lovely greens coming through and the webbing and lacing so there you go i hope you um enjoyed this video and you found it useful i know it's quite lengthy but um i had to show you the whole process i could have just done the mixing of the colors and the pouring medium by itself but i think it's more beneficial to see the whole picture the whole story from start to finish it's not an easy technique to learn it will take a while and also needs lots of practice so keep at it and okay bye for now

Channel: Claire Schaffrath

Views: 6,024

Rating: 4.9282513 out of 5

Keywords: acrylic pouring, composition, acrylic paint pouring, for beginners, fluid art, UK acrylic paint pouring, UK fluid artist, art, fluid bloom, acrylic pouring techniques, uk fluid artist, uk acrylic pouring, sheleeart technique, fluid bloom technique, cell activator, pouring medium, green acrylic pour

Id: M_avQVyxqDU

Length: 38min 56sec (2336 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020