Fire has been one of the most intriguing things since the beginning of time, so it’s no wonder that we would want to find a way to create fire paintings to capture that intriguing air in our art. But it doesn’t have to be difficult! I’m going to show you two acrylic pouring techniques that you can use to create your own fire paintings quickly and easily!
If you’re pouring for the first time and would like more explanation on materials, processes, and terms, you can head on over to my Beginner’s Guide to Acrylic Pouring. You can also head over to my Comprehensive Guide to Acrylic Pouring Techniques for more information on all of the different techniques and my How to Thin Acrylic Paint for Acrylic Pouring post to learn all about pouring mediums!
How to Paint Fire
So how do you use acrylic pouring to paint fire? Well, the techniques that I used were:
- Swipe Technique
- Dutch Pour Technique
What colors do you need to paint fire?
When we think of fire, we naturally think of warm colors, oranges, reds, yellows. But there is a part of fire where there are blues and whites — the hottest part of the fire. So you could incorporate that as well.
The other element that I really like to add into my fire paintings is metallics. I like to use gold and copper to add some shine and light reflecting off of the flames. I think this makes the flames much more dynamic.
Also keep in mind that you can have as bright or as subtle flames as you choose with either of these techniques. Check out the paintings below for an example! They were both done with a swipe technique but are very different.
(If you’re curious about colors and color theory as it relates to acrylic pouring, head on over to my post about Choosing Colors for Acrylic Pouring and grab your FREE printable Color Wheel and Color Scheme Guides below!)
Materials You Will Need to do a Fire Painting
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Paints:
- Master’s Touch Titanium White
- Master’s Touch Pthalo Blue
- Master’s Touch Permanent Black
- Master’s Touch Crimson
- Master’s Touch Orange
- Master’s Touch Yellow Med
- Artist’s Loft Copper
- Artist’s Loft Old Gold
(All of my colors were mixed from the paints above. )
Pouring Medium:
- Floetrol
- Water
Tools:
- Palette Knife
- Hair dryer
- Baby wipe, paper towel, your favorite swiping tool
Canvas:
How to Paint Fire Video Tutorial
Step-by-step Fire Painting with Acrylic Pouring
Dutch pour Technique
- Lay down a base coat of your background. I used black and I think most people use black because it harkins back to the fact that we use fire at night time most often and you can see the beauty of fire especially well in the dark.
- Layer the colors for your flames at the bottom of your canvas. The order that I layered my colors was: red, orange, yellow, light orange, copper, maroon.
- Using a baby wipe, a paper towel, a piece of plastic, your favorite swiping tool to swipe your flame colors up toward the top of the canvas.
- Tilt the canvas as you wish, tilting toward the top of the canvas can help stretch the flames upward.
- Go in with a palette knife or popsicle stick or some other tool to refine the composition that you want.
Swipe Technique
- Lay down a base coat of your background. I used black and I think most people use black because it harkins back to the fact that we use fire at night time most often and you can see the beauty of fire especially well in the dark.
- Layer the colors for your flames at the bottom of your canvas. The order that I layered my colors was: orange, red, yellow, light orange, copper, gold.
- Put an extra layer of your background color at the top of your flame colors.
- Flip your canvas to where your flames are at the top of the canvas.
- Using a hairdryer or a straw or an airbrush, blow that extra background paint over your flame colors.
- Flip your canvas back around and blow the flame colors out toward the top of the canvas.
- Take a straw and blow out the top of your flames to where there is more definition in the tips of the flames.
- Blow out the background color if there are thick places so that the paint is more even and dries evenly.
Go Forth and Pour!
Simple as that! Now you can create amazing fire paintings super quickly and easily with both the Dutch pour and swipe techniques.
If you’re into painting the elements, check out my post all about different ways to paint water!
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Want to remember this tutorial on how to create fire paintings with acrylic pour painting? Pin this tutorial to your favorite Pinterest Board!
