You know that I’m a realist artist but this lockdown was long. I felt drained of creativity, motivation, and inspiration to produce anything. As a result I began to experiment with other mediums in my studio hoping to revive my feeling of joy. For some reason it was difficult to find excitement in my ‘regular’ portrait painting and colored pencil drawing. So the idea was to learn resin art and fluid art painting techniques from scratch to combine them with my realist art in a new way. Here I’d like to share what I learned doing resin art (and the resin art supplies list at the end of this article).
Let it be, 12x16in, mixed media on wood panel |To make poured resin art, I drew the image in colored pencil, varnished the surface, glued crushed glass and did resin pour twice. The first layer has some extra fine glitters in specific areas of my drawing. The final layer has just a bot of other extra fine glitter not to obscure the face. Glass and glitter have amazing sparkle that doesn’t show up in photography.
1. Resin quality & variety
All resins are different in consistency and application. You have to try several different brands to figure out what works for you and your projects. For example, Liquid Diamonds is a high-quality resin that runs like water. It’s both good and bad for resin artists. It’s good because you need much less resin to cover the surface. It also generates less heat as a result of thin application. (Not melting the wax in colored pencil as much due to less heat produced). It’s not great because it can run over the edge really badly. The entire batch of mixed resin can potentially run off the surface through one small cavity present between the edge and tape. I think that Liquid Diamonds art resin is great to use on the surfaces that already have borders like a tray or a bowl.
Some resins have doming capabilities like Little Windows or KSRESIN. This is great to hold the edge and no so good cost-wise because you need to apply a lot more resin to cover the surface completely especially if you work in subsequent layers. Thicker resins tend to roll off the previous resin layer unless you have enough to cover the entire surface or you’ve done some sanding. And that’s why it depends what kind of resin art project you do.
Each resin works great for specific projects and maybe terrible for others. I’ve done small jewelry pieces, small and large resin paintings as well as some geode art and large geode pieces. In my experience Little Windows mixes great and gives very few (if any) bubbles working small (jewelry and small craft projects). It’s crystal clear, easy to mix and dome, and non-toxic! I didn’t like it that much working large however because it likes to be poured all at once and left untouched. Otherwise it could leave strange patterns in the resin. Other resins like KSRESIN or Liquid Diamonds give me a chance to spread the resin around the panel and to manipulate it some to cover the surface without leaving any patterns in it.
Blue geode art painting, 8x10in | This was one of my practice pieces I made before starting on a large-scale project. This poured resin art piece was done in layers to produce varied effects you see on the surface. I also used Pinata alcohol inks, acrylic paints, crushed glass, diamond dust and glitters.
2. Consider the scale of your project
As a result the scale of your project or the amount of mixed resin you need requires experience that no one can give you in a tutorial. Only by mixing the resins yourself and applying them in your varied projects you learn what works and what doesn’t and how much mixed resin you need for a specific art piece.
One advice I can give you is to start small. Resin is expensive to waste it especially if you buy art resins. But most importantly working small cuts on your frustrations because a lot of things can go wrong working big (mixing not enough resin, falling dust, broken edge, uneven application, bubbles, etc). By working small you minimize your frustration on so many potentially frustrating problems!
Green geode art painting, 5x7in | This was one of my practice pieces I made before working on a large-scale project. This poured resin art piece was done in layers to produce varied effects you see on the surface. I also used Pinata alcohol inks, acrylic paints, crushed glass, diamond dust and glitters.
3. Consider working time
Working time varies greatly in resins. Quick Coat Resin can start setting up in 10-15 minutes while KSRESIN has 45+minutes working time. If you don’t add any powders or paint to the mixture, the working time is long enough to spread it around, torch, level it out and torch again.
In my experience, what I found cuts on working time greatly are high humidity levels, high room temperature and the amount of added pigments mixed into the resins. This becomes crucial to learn when you do large resin art pieces! Because resins can set up almost instantly having acrylic paint or mica powder mixed into them. They’ll set up so quickly you won’t be able to take them out of your cup! In general it’s best to add just a little bit of pigment to resin for it to set up properly.
Also, if you make geode art you want some of your edges to blend more while others look hard. Working time and layering greatly affects what kind of edge you’ll get between the colors.
Resins have varied mixing instructions in terms of volume and time needed to mix both parts. You must follow mixing ratios written in the instructions for every new resin you use. Some resins have 2:1 mixing ratios and others have 1:1 ratio. Mixing time varies too and it’s very important not to cut on mixing time. Spend as much time as necessary mixing the two parts into one and only after that add pigments/glitter/ powder into it and mix it some more. For example it takes 4 minutes to mix both parts of KSRESIN. Why is it important? You need to do it right to prevent having soft spots, cracking or uneven application.
If you use plastic cups that don’t have precise measurements written on them, pick identical cups and measure the level you want with a ruler. For example I can measure and mark 1 inch from the cup’s bottom. I mark both cups with a sharpie, pour equal parts of hardener and resin into those cups leveling resin out to that 1″ mark and then I take the 3d cup to combine these two together. If it’s 2:1 ratio, you can’t measure 2 inches vs 1 inch because the cup widens. So I use the same 1″ cup to measure it twice.
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