Hannah Rachael Hudd

Layers upon layers of accidents, disasters, questionable technique and bad decisions can become something truly exquisite.

The wonderful thing about creating modern abstract art is that you can never make a mistake! You can just keep playing and enjoying the process until you create something you love.

Paint Pouring & Happy Accidents

This week, I’ve tried a technique that I’ve wanted to do for ages… Paint Pouring! It’s so much fun, and when it goes well, the results look pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself!

Flow State

Apart from the cleaning up afterwards – of which, there is a lot – I find painting so relaxing that it’s almost meditative. Especially if you don’t have a specific result in mind and are happy to experiment and see what happens.

With paint pouring, you literally have to just go with the flow and see where it takes you! And as I’ve discovered, even if it is going really badly, you can always decide to abandon the original plan and improvise (see my alternative abstract painting and digital artworks below!).

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Layers upon layers of accidents, disasters, questionable technique and bad decisions can become something truly exquisite. Well, beautiful to the eye of the beholder at least! You may find that other people only see the chaos and mistakes, but as long as you love what you’ve created it doesn’t matter. Much like life itself!

Unexpected Results & Bonus Artworks

My first paint pouring experiment was a disaster because my paint wasn’t flowing very well and I had tried to incorporate too many colours so they began to merge and create murky tones that I didn’t like. So, I decided to improvise…

I didn’t want to waste the canvas board (or paint) so I decided to abandon the paint pouring technique and create an alternative abstract painting.

I used artpaper to soak up the splodges of different colours and then built up the layers by removing or adding more splodges of colour to create the new piece. Then I photographed the pieces of artpaper, zooming in on interesting patterns and colour combinations and digitally enhanced the images to create the digital artworks in the gallery below.

The Gallery of “Bonus” Digital Artworks

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Hybrid Technique

Last year, I published a book for children called Happy Thoughts and Wise Words and used this hybrid technique (creating abstract paintings, photographing them and then digitally enhancing the images) as the basis of the artwork and patterned text. I’ve also used it for the HRH logo for this website. I love the process and it’s very experimental and the results can be really interesting.

My Second Paint Pouring Attempt – Success!

My third attempt was also kind of disastrous, but I’ve been to the shop today to buy some products to mix with the paint to make it more fluid (I found that the gold paint was too thick and caused problems – even though it was the same brand of “Fluid Acrylic”) so hopefully my fourth attempt will be blog-worthy!

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