5 Unusual Ways To Paint For Fun

Ad collaborative post // Painting is an activity that is proven to have a wonderful influence on the human brain, make people calmer and feel happier. However, many people think that painting is only for professionals, and you can paint only if you have a talent.

The great news is – this is not true. Everyone can paint, yes even you, lovely reader. I know is hard to believe if you have never painted before but participating in a paint and sip party is everything else but a fine art class. It is all about having fun and a great time with your friends, family or co-workers. 

So, if you have never heard about paint & sip events, they are social or private parties, where you sit with other art enthusiasts and paint something beautiful while sipping a glass (or two :)) of good wine, Prosecco, or something else. Honestly, between you and me, magic happens when some drinks are involved in the painting process.  

The parties are normally led by an artist-instructor and art enthusiasts who show you step by step how to paint a particular painting and gives you personal tips on how to make your masterpiece the way you want it to be.

So, the most common mediums for painting are acrylic, watercolour and oil. At Merriment Atelier, we mainly use acrylic for our social paint parties, however, for some private events like hen parties, birthday parties or team buildings, we sometimes have a little twist and we paint in different ways. Click here to check out the different classes offered by Merriment Atelier!

Here there are 5 different ways you can get creative and make something unique this summer:

Painting with acrylics on…

Canvas, wood, stones, glass .. . Yes, you can paint with acrylic on almost everything. Acrylic is a lovely, water-based medium that once gets dry can stay forever on the surface. That is why allows creative people to explore so many different ideas, but it’s also very easy to work with it.

If you have never painted before, acrylic might be the best medium to start with. 

Try first painting on canvas. Join an online paint party and simply follow the instruction. After a few classes, you will have the confidence to experiment and try painting on a wooden board, stone or something else.   

Painting witch acrylic in watercolour techniques

This is a lovely technique, and you can have awesome results. Watercolours are different from acrylic, and they required different approaches and techniques. But you can achieve the same wonderful effect with acrylic paints. 

To create your a la watercolour masterpiece, you will need watercolour paper instead of canvas and a primer to cover the paper before you start painting. For this technique, you do not need a lot of paint as you are going to mix it with a lot of water. The best things you can paint with this technique are under the sea, galaxy, abstracts or flowers. 

Acrylic pouring

This wonderful technique becoming a hit in the acrylic painting world. I adore it as it is so easy, so simple and every piece of art looks fabulous. The painting looks very much like marble, and you can mix it with metallic colours like gold or silver, you can add a little bit of glitter and so on.

You will need either ready to use acrylic paint for pouring or you can mix any acrylic paints with “Pouring fluid” in a ratio of 50/50. You need a service to pour on like canvas, wooden board, or anything else you’d like. Remember, this is still acrylic medium, so you can use it on almost any surface. 

There are quite a few interesting techniques, but if you are a beginner, start with “dirty pouring” or “puddle pouring”. Both techniques are for beginners. For dirty pouring, you must mix all paints in one cup, pour over the canvas and move the canvas to create your own piece. For puddle pouring, you need to mix the colours on the canvas before you start moving the canvas.

Both techniques are super fun, and the results are always incredibly beautiful. 

Painting with wine

If you are anything like me, love to drink wine, you may ask, why on earth I will waste a glass of lovely wine to paint with when I can drink it?

Well, exactly because I am a massive wine lover, I can tell you, that painting with wine is a super enjoyable and interesting experience.

I recently started a virtual workshop, so if you would like to explore this different style of painting, you are more than welcome to join me. I will show you a few easy techniques and you will have a super fun time painting with and sipping red wine. 

The wine is a wonderful medium to explore. Different wines give different colours, so if you want to experiment, you can try merlot, cabaret or rioja. For darker colours I use Malbec. Sometimes, depends on the project I reduce the wine, so I can get even darker colours, for some other projects I may add some wine dye to darkener the wine.

You also can use a rose wine, but due to the light colour, you will need to reduce it, otherwise, it is too pale. Do not try white wine – sounds obvious – it’s too white and you can’t see it on the paper.

Painting with wine is like monochrome painting. The good thing is you can build the colour and make it more intense. For this technique, you should use primarily watercolour painting techniques.

Painting with coffee

Yeah, this is another very unusual medium to paint with. I love coffee as much as I love wine, or maybe a bit more. My days always start with a cup of hot coffee, but not always finishing with a glass of wine.

So, painting with coffee is as fun as painting with wine but with coffee, we use different techniques. The coffee has more intensity and darker colour, especially if you are using an instant coffee than browed one.

For instant coffee, you just need to mix one teaspoon of coffee in three different ways – with a small amount of water, a medium amount of water and with more water. You easily can create a lot more shades by experimenting with how much water do you add to the coffee.

You certainly can try painting with americano, espresso and brewed coffee. The same as with the wine, the different ways of preparing the coffee will give you different shades.

I believe these 5 ways of exploring your creativity can be a lovely new hobby for you this summer for you. Painting is a very rewarding process because gives you the ability to express yourself the way you want. I like to say to our paint party guests – it is your canvas, your rules. We will be showing you the steps of how to paint this particular painting, but what are you going to paint is totally your choice. The results are always fabulous, just do not judge your painting before you have finished it.

What are your thoughts, what do you want to try to paint with this summer?