Acrylic Pour Painting- Easy Image Transfer Onto A Pour.

Let's solve a problem we all share. What do you do with all those paintings that seem to need a finishing touch? I'm going to show you an easy image transfer that could be just what you need to bring your painting into focus. You need three things. The first thing is you need a laser printer. I switched from inkjet to laser a few years ago because I got tired of buying colored ink for what was mostly printing in black. I bought an inexpensive laser printer. I've never regretted it. The toner cartridge lasts a long time and I'm going to put a link to my favorite laser printer. It's on my Amazon list in the link below. Number two is you need these shipping labels and what you do is you take these are big shipping labels and you take the labels off. Do whatever with them and you're going to print on this glossy backing. This is the print I'm going to use today that I printed on this glossy backing. The good news about these labels is they're really inexpensive. The bad news is it doesn't always print perfectly. As you can see on this trout there's a little piece missing here and it's very difficult to get a perfect print but this one's pretty good and I'm going to use it today. I'm also going to show you another example of one that didn't print very well. You may experience this. You can see right here it didn't print and this the toner kind of went over here. What you can do is this this toner is just sitting on top of this glossy backing and you can actually scratch that off with your fingernail or with a little tool and clean that image up and then you can also repair this after you do the transfer. If you want to use this you can you can paint that black line back in after the transfer is done. So just be aware that it's not a perfect system but again it's these uh these labels are really inexpensive and they they work pretty good through your laser printer. It doesn't work with inkjet. All right let's get started on this. I'm going to use this painting today. This is on watercolor paper but you can transfer onto canvas or board whatever your painting is on. I'm going to transfer up here in this light colored area because it'll show up better if you transfer to something dark it's not going to show up quite as well. To me this area right here is just crying out for a fish so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this fish and we're going to put him right there and then item number three is gel medium. That is how it's going to transfer and again I have this in my amazon list as well as these shipping labels. This dries clear. It looks white right now and I like to use my fingers as opposed to a brush. I just get a better feel for what I'm doing. I'm going to spread this gel medium over this top area where the fish is going to be and I'm looking in the light to make sure that I get it spread around. I don't want to miss anything any areas. You want to go a little further than you think you need that way you don't make any mistakes. Better to have too much than not enough but I also don't want it super thick. I just want it kind of an even layer as even as I can make it. I'm going to smooth it out. That looks pretty good. I don't know if you can see it where you are but I have a glare that I can see where I got a pretty pretty smooth layer. Now I'm going to take my glove off and remember your gloves are reusable and I'm going to take my fish and I'm going to decide where I want it. I already I'm going to check and see if I got it in the right spot. There he goes. You have an opportunity to move it slightly before you press it down but you want to try and get it hit it right the first time. There it is right there. Now I'm going to press it down with my fingers and I'm going to smooth out any bubbles. It's going to flatten out the gel medium and push it off to the side but we want a nice tight seal. You can start to see the image through here. You know you can take your time with this. There's no hurry but I can see where the paper's rising up so I just want to make sure that I press that down. That will ensure the that the entire image transfers and you don't miss anything. But remember you can repair this after the fact and we'll we'll do that if we need to. Let's see this paper's buckling a little no big deal. Just going to get a nice nice and smooth. That's pretty good. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to give this an hour to dry. You can leave this overnight if you want but about an hour is the drying time. So in one hour we're going to come back and we're going to reveal the transfer. Okay it's been a little over an hour and this feels really dry to me but before I peel this up and show you what the results are I want to talk to you a little bit about that big stack of paintings that I mentioned before. You know to the casual observer these unfinished paintings don't look like much but to you you say casual observer I have really big plans. That's all they need to know because in order to make great art you have to make a lot of art and this is just another stop along the way. So with that being said I'm gonna let's get up close and I can feel this is dry. It's really stuck down. If you want to cheat a little bit and look at it prior to an hour what you want to do is just go very carefully and see if it's stuck down. Now this has been longer than an hour so I know it's stuck down. There it is. Let me straighten this out just a little so it's a straight dish. I'm gonna peel this up. It's so exciting to see this. Look at that. There it is and as I said before this little missing area if something like that bothers you it could be painted in with a little tiny black brush and acrylic paint or possibly a marker. I'll probably do that later but there it is. Again this looks this trap looks like he belongs there right above the water and see how this changes from an abstract unfinished swipe. This is I was doing this I was testing out some color combinations lo and behold there it is a fish. Before I go I have done image transfers before but I did not know about using this paper until I saw The Craftsman do it. Now if you don't know who The Craftsman is he has a YouTube channel. Somebody said The Craftsman has the best YouTube channel ever and I would have to agree with that so go check out The Craftsman. There's no t in Craftsman. It's The Craftsman Steady Crafting. You won't regret it. Before you go check out The Craftsman please like this video, comment, subscribe if you're new. Also check out my social media links below and my Amazon shopping list where I have all my favorite paint corn supplies including these labels that I use, my favorite laser printer for printing and the gel medium. All that good stuff and if you would like to try my own line of paint ready to pour go to happymedium.fun This is how I did this background swipe. These are my 32 ounce bottles of happy medium paint sitting behind me. Check out my other videos for all those techniques if you're new to paint pouring. Thanks for watching this video. It's going to be a great start to the new year and we'll see you next time.