150 Seahorse Silhouette Acrylic Pour Painting

Hi everybody. Today I was going to do another acrylic pour silhouette using my Crafty Jen technique with the vinyls. Today is underwater theme. This is a seahorse silhouette that I'm going to use today. These are my pre-cut vinyls that I sell on my website. You can check out a link in the description or the card up here in the corner. You can click on there too. They come with the negative and the positive sides. Today we're going to use both in order to create a super fun, really cool Crafty Jen silhouette acrylic pour swipe. What a name, hey? I'm just going to peel off a portion of the silhouette. Sometimes it's easy to simply just peel off a little portion and put it onto your canvas. Today I'm using a 10 by 20 inch canvas that I got from Michaels. You can use any kind of size. I do make these in a lot of different sizes. If you're using it for a bigger one, it totally can accommodate you guys on different sizes that you want or some custom ones. The nice part is these are movable and you can reposition them to where you want them on your canvas. Here you can get a better view. This is the positive side of the silhouette which I'm going to use to protect the swipe and paint a cool underwater scene on the negative side. To start, we've got to seal the negative side of the vinyl to the canvas. With these canvases, if you were to do this technique on a wooden canvas, you won't get any issues. I do them on the cheaper canvases so I can show you guys how to fix any issues that arise or if you get any peeling. When you use higher grade canvases or wooden canvases, you don't have as many issues, especially wood. It just peels right off and works really good. I always like to do it on these cheaper ones because it's accessible to everyone and that way I can also show you how to fix things that happen. Everything's fixable. You want to figure out where you want to position your seahorse. I do want to do a big underwater scene on the negative side or sort of a scene. I usually put my silhouette in the first 1 third of the canvas to leave enough room for the beautiful swipe. I'm kind of liking where he is right now, almost center. I think I'm just going to reposition him up a little. I don't even mind that the tail is cut off like that. That's kind of cute. You can see the little horn on there. I think that's pretty good. We just have a little bump. I don't mind right here and then I'm going to do a swipe and this leaves me enough room to paint a really cool underwater scene. I go through this with all of my silhouette videos. There's lots and I actually have a playlist if you go to my channel where you can view all of the different silhouettes that I've done over time. I need to grab a piece of parchment paper. I've got my Loli Vifi Silicone Mat. You can see the little corner there. You can get 10% off your entire order of Loli Vifi products just by visiting their website and using my code JEN10. I hope you guys check that out. She's got a lot of amazing cool products on her site and I love these silicone mats for anything to do with resin or acrylic pouring. To seal your vinyls, all you need is a little bit of Liquitex Gloss Varnish. There'll be a link in the description for that. I just put a little bit on some parchment paper just so I could pick it up. You want a very thin coat. I'm going to coat it from here to here underneath and then put the vinyl down while it's wet. A good thing to do first, which sometimes I forget, is you can use a pencil and just mark out where your edges are, just like this, so you know where to put your Liquitex Gloss. Don't worry because your pencil mark will be covered with acrylic paints anyway, so no worries there. This just helps give you a guide on where to put your Liquitex Gloss Varnish. You want a nice thin coat. You're going to see that I go all the way over and under and even out to the side. I'm not too worried because I want to make sure that that gets nice and sealed. I go way past where the silhouette would normally be, and then I actually push the vinyl down while it's wet. Then I take more Liquitex Gloss Varnish and I push down with the paintbrush so that it seals it in and you get a nice good seal. Liquitex Gloss Varnish dries fairly quickly, so just an FYI, it doesn't take too long to do this process. This piece right here I might have to hold it down when it's a little bit tackier. Then I'm just going to peel up from the top up to where I had stopped with the Liquitex Gloss Varnish. Like I said, a very thin layer, just like this, push it down while it's wet, grab a little more. It goes fairly quickly and you just want to go from this side above and out to get a nice good seal on your vinyl. I'm going to push a little more Liquitex Gloss Varnish. You don't need very much for sealing your silhouettes down. Out from underneath, making sure it's nice and thin. You don't want it too thick or it pulls up a lot of the gesso. Then I push it down with the brush. Get a nice good seal on there. For this portion, I'm going to do this whole area. Feel free to do a big area like so because I have the pencil marks there, I can kind of tell where the silhouette would be. Just a nice thin layer. Then I put the vinyl down in the wet Liquitex Gloss Varnish and I grab a little more and I seal it up. It works really good, especially on wooden canvases. Like I said, I use the cheaper canvases because that's what a lot of people use. Especially if you want to try it out, definitely. You can just grab these from Michaels. There we go. Just like that. Then I push this over and I'm going to see if it's going to stick or not. Sometimes you just have to hold it until that Gloss Varnish basically gets tacky and dries, which is what I might have to do here. Once this is dry, we'll come back and do the Acrylic Pour Swipe with some pretty blues and I'll mix up a bunch of colors for it, I'm thinking. I think it'll look really cool, especially with a nice beautiful ocean scene, underwater scene over here. Okay, everything's dry. It's all sealed now and it's ready for us to paint. I'm super excited about this one because I'm excited to paint the scene on the negative side. Today I'm using white for paint. I'm going to do that as my swiping color. I've got some silver, which is just Artist Loft silver. I mixed up a deep dark blue. This is the Brilliant Blue from Artist Loft and then just some black to make a nice deep navy blue. I'm using this is Metallic Artist Loft, Metallic Cobalt Blue, which is super pretty. I think those will be some really good colors for ocean. I have an idea of what to use the drippings with as well. I have my transparency paper, which are awesome because you can reuse them. Before I was using paper towel, but I kind of like using this now because I can just wash them and clean them and then reuse them, so it kind of works out really good. That's what I'm going to use for swiping. I'm going to add my silicone. I just buy 100% silicone on Amazon. There'll be a link in the description. I'm just going to put 2 drops of silicone into these colors here. I'm not going to put any in the white because that's what I'm going to use for my swiping. That should be good for that. With the silicone, I'm just going to push it down and around. I don't actually want to mix it in too much because then the cells will be bigger. I'm just getting it so that it's inside the paint and ready. Floetrol also helps to get cells. If you use Floetrol, it also helps to get cells. The white has no silicone. I'm going to flood this area with some colors, basically with my blues and my silver and stuff. I'm just going to leave right here for the white. You can do this in stripes like I've done with a rainbow. Let it pour over the edges and stuff like this. I might bring a little bit in here. Nice and goopy. If there's one thing about acrylic pouring, it's definitely messy, but you get some really cool results. I'm going to try and fill some of the other areas with the other colors, just like so. That's why I didn't mix up too much. I don't want to put too much dark, so I'm just going to pour it over in some lines. Maybe a little bit there, a little bit here. Just fill it in however you guys like so that your canvas is coated, has some nice colors in it that will come through. I used way more of the metallic cobalt blue than I am the other colors. You can also just use your popsicle stick to add some back in or get some to go over the edges like right here. Everything that's dripping over, all the paint that drips over, I'm going to use it to make a paint skin, so don't worry, nothing's going to get wasted. It is a lot of paint, but we use all the paint. Sometimes I like to just get the edges now while I can, because that way when I swipe and it goes over the edge, it makes it a lot easier. Make sure you have some paper towel on hand in order to do your acrylic pouring. There we go, I've got paper towel ready, and I'm going to pour my white, which is just some Artist Loft Acrylic White and some Floetrol and a little bit of water. I'm going to pour that right about here, and this is where I want to use this to swipe with. If you're wondering about why I didn't pour it up here, I'm just going to spread it out after I do the swipe. This is always a challenging part because I don't want to hit the tripod, but basically I'm just going to use my transparency and I'm just going to put it in that white and let it collect a bit. Once it's collected, I'm going to slide it while lifting up a little bit. Boom, just like that. Awesome, I need a popsicle stick so I can get all this good paint off of the transparency and use that in my paint skin. I'm just going to put this transparency over here for a sec, and you're going to see that it's already going to start to create cells, which is awesome. I'm just going to give it a quick torch. Torching is to help pop the silicone bubbles and also helps to basically create a few more cells you'll find. For the most part, this is going to really start to open up. The cells will keep growing as it sits, so this was a pretty quick reaction right here, but you're going to find that over here, the cells will just keep growing and growing until you have a whole bunch. I like to get the sides too. Beautiful seahorse, love it. We even got a few more coming up here. If you didn't like how far back it went, you could swipe this way and swipe back. I've done that before, but I think I'm going to leave it. You can tilt as well. Let's just try a little bit of tilting. It does stretch your cells out, so just an FYI that by tilting, you are going to get some stretched out cells. You're going to see the white is going to go over that way. Then I can tilt back, just like so. Do I swipe back? I totally could, and then I might have a thinner silhouette of the seahorse. You could also have cells going all the way up into the seahorse. Let's try swiping back. I know this gives everybody heart attacks when I do this stuff, but it's okay because I'm here to experiment, and then you can create your own. I'm just going to grab this and swipe back because I actually want more of the color this way. You're going to see that go all crazy. Don't worry. There we go. Now I'm going to just swipe back. I'm going to put a little bit of extra white right here, even though I know we have a whole bunch. Just like that. Then I'm going to swipe back so the white goes back over. I might even get some cells up here. That's okay. I'm totally cool with that. We're going to swipe back, lifting up. Boom! Whoops! You've got to make sure that you don't put your transparency back over top of your painting or you're going to get paint all over. There we go. I'm going to put this aside for a second. Look at that. I like it. Even if you do a second swipe, you're still going to get cells. I like it because I got more cells up here and more color closer. I even like this right here. It's going to become part of the tail a little bit as well as part of his body and stuff like that. These are going to keep growing and become wonderful, beautiful cells. Just be careful you don't torch your vinyl. That would not be good. I like that. That's going to keep growing. I'm going to do the sides here. Don't forget to do your sides. Add some paint in there. I'm going to add some white right here to get the last bit of his tail. You might be wondering, what about the rest of the silhouette up here, like his head? That's super easy. I'm going to take some of my white and just add that where his nose and his head is so that we have a nice clean silhouette. Just like that. Beautiful. I actually really like that. I love what's happening right here. I love the big cells that are happening. I think it's really cool. I'm going to grab a little bit of paint right here. See some part of that. Voila! That's going to take a few days to dry, definitely. I'll bring you guys back. It'll be a split second for you, but it'll be a few days, definitely. Probably 3-4 days for this to all dry because there's a lot of paint on there. Once it's dry, I'll bring you guys back and I'll show you guys the beautiful scene we're going to paint on the negative side. This is pretty much dry. There is a little bit of a wet spot there, but most of it is pretty dry now, especially the edges. More importantly, the edge along here is completely dry. It's time to remove the vinyl silhouette. I just carefully peel up the vinyl. Just take your time. You don't need canvases. You're going to see this happen, which is good because I can show you how to fix it. I do in every video for the silhouettes. If you ever want to just skip through parts, you can check out video chapters in the description. You click on the different areas if you want to go to different portions of the video. I'm also going to use this handy dandy tool because this is the tail of the seahorse. I'm just going to peel up the vinyl right here because I had glued it down to the side. We're getting quite a bit of gesso that's coming up with this portion. That's okay. This way I'll show you how to fix it and then you'll know. If you do this on wood or higher quality canvases, you won't have this issue. This one was a really bad one. Look at that. We are really peeling away. This is good. This might happen to you and you might freak out, but don't freak out because I will help you fix it. I'm going to do this. There we go. That was a huge portion that came up. You'll see with the lower quality canvases how sparingly the weave is on the canvas. That's just because a higher quality one would be a tighter weave, so you probably wouldn't have as big an issue. This one is a huge issue, but that's okay. We will fix it. Everything is fixable. This will be a really good one to show you how we fix all this up because this is all coming up. I'm just going to get the neck part of the seahorse. I kind of wanted to do this one on wood, but then I thought, well, what if people have trouble and they don't see previous silhouette videos? They might still want to see how to fix it. Obviously when I do these on wood, I don't get this. Obviously when you pull it up on wood, you don't get any issues. That is the silhouette of the seahorse. I love how it faded into the blues. It looks super pretty. With this, I didn't get any paint leakage, actually, so that's pretty cool. I'm just getting a lot of gesso that peeled up. I'm going to use a paintbrush. Usually a smaller paintbrush is best. Depending on what the silhouette is, I'll use a pointed paintbrush, but you can also use a small square one. I'm using some Liquitex gesso. Sometimes they say Liquitex gloss varnish, but it's gesso. I'm going to take it right from the bottle because I don't need too much. All you want to do is paint these areas back in. The gesso has a bit more structure than regular paint and it will give a nice tooth to whatever color you want to paint this side. I'm just going to take my time. I'm going to paint gesso into these areas. Because some are rather large, you might have to do a couple of coats. You're going to find that the gesso is going to push through these holes, which is fine because it's going to dry and create a substructure for the next layer to adhere to. I have painted in all the areas that peeled up. I'm going to let that dry. I'll probably do a second coat of gesso over some areas because they were so large. One thing to remember is that you're going to see on the back, see how it all came through? Just let that dry. Don't wipe it. Let that gesso dry. It's the back of the canvas. Nobody's going to see it, so just let all of that dry. Once it is dry fully, then your front is pretty much good to go. If you were to wipe it, it's going to ruin all the work you just did. That's creating a seal for all of that canvas that got peeled up. Once you do a second coat, this will be perfect to paint your negative scene. Everything is repaired and dried. I have my positive side of my vinyl ready too. I'm going to show you the back. Here it's all dry. You'll see the gesso is this weird, stuck through all the holes. This is the back. It all dried good, left for a really smooth surface on the front that we can now clean. Then I can put the positive vinyl on here and paint the negative side. To clean your paintings, because sometimes you'll get silicone in your cells, I'm going to shine it in the light a little bit. I can see there's a little bit of isopropyl alcohol. I put a little bit onto some paper towel. You don't need too much. Once it's spread out a little, all I do is go one good cleaning over the whole thing. You'll see I got a little bit off, but not too much. The important thing is don't re-swipe right away. You want to let all of that alcohol evaporate. If I was to keep swiping, I would lift all the acrylic paint off of my painting, or smear it around. I want to make sure all that alcohol dissipates. You can touch it. It'll feel tacky. When it's not tacky anymore, you can swipe again to get that silicone off. I'm going to take a look. I still have a little bit of silicone right here, but not too much. The isopropyl alcohol evaporates fairly quickly, so that is nice. I might rework that area a little bit. I'm going to do a little bit of extra rubbing there. Other than that, it should be pretty good to go. I just shined it in the light a little bit. I didn't go over this part, so I'm going to wipe a couple times. That looks pretty good. That alcohol will evaporate pretty quickly. I have cells right up to the edge here. I love what happened here and all of this and in the tail. I love it. For this seahorse, it's probably hard to see because it's white on white, but there is a lip and an edge that is created by the vinyls. That helps to hand-paint up to it, or you can also use the positive side of your vinyl to protect this side of the painting while you paint this. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to peel this off. The hardest part is usually just grabbing an edge. Once you get it, you're good to go. Just be careful it doesn't stick back on itself. That's all you have to be careful of. Then I just realign it. It should line up exactly, so just work it until you get it exactly on there protecting your painting. With the vinyl, you can pick it up, move it around, and you should be able to line it up absolutely perfect. Sometimes it sticks to you. It doesn't quite line up perfectly under here, so I'm just going to keep working with this. The positive side of the vinyl is lined up. You don't want to use any Liquitex glosses. This is just to protect it, but you don't want it to actually peel up your paint, so you just stick it down. It's just kind of on there, stuck on there lightly. Basically, it'll help protect this beautiful swipe while we paint this side. This side I'm going to paint with straight acrylics, not the flow acrylics like you would use on the swiping side, because I want to paint a beautiful underwater scene. I'll probably do this in stages with the acrylic paint, maybe a nice layered effect, and then I'll paint the rest of the scene. You can paint, let it dry, paint again, let it dry, and keep adding and adding layers to your scene. This is going to be a more in-depth one, but I'll get some paint and we'll get started. I have my acrylic paints. I have some turquoise, some white, some blue. I'm going to mix up a base colour, a gradient, that I'm going to paint the scene on top of, so I want it to be underwater, so it's kind of light at the top, light blue. I'm going to fade it into a deeper blue at the bottom. I'm going to take some paint, acrylic paint, mix it with a bit of white. Now you can mix this separately on a palette if you want, or you can mix it right at the top. Totally up to you how you want to create your scene. I'm kind of liking that blue, maybe a bit more white. Now an important thing to remember is when you're dealing with the vinyl, you want to push down and away from the vinyl. That way you're not getting paint, like if you were to do it like this first, you might get paint that would go underneath the vinyl. So I just take my brush and I kind of just push away from the vinyl. I'm just going to make sure I get the top part and the edges of the painting. There is a lot of paint on here, but I actually like using a lot of paint when I do my negative side. Now I'm going