Jay Haskins is a British artist who lives in a town called Dartford (which is north northwest of Kent). He works as a driving instructor and originally didn’t have much time for art but after watching many YouTube videos of fluid art, he found his interest grew and became more confident in his ability to give it a try.
During the 2020 lockdown last March, Jay decided to buy some art supplies and started playing around with different techniques that he felt most interesting. One technique in particular being “blog painting” inspired by a guy from America called Mike hammer.
Depending on where you live, the temperature may fluctuate a lot. As a result, it affects how paintings dry all the time. Haskins, for instance, had setup a way to circulate and pump out warm air during the winter and prevent freezing temperatures by adding in some warm air to create the balance in temperature he felt best for drying time.
Haskins usually has a clear idea of his color scheme, starting from the ideal surface type, the base colors (should it be white, black, or colorful?), then any other color decisions (if he wants the blobs touching or not touching, how much is going to go over the side, how big the blobs are going to be, etc.) are made simply from going with the flow.
During our conversations Jay mentioned: “The fact is that in fluid art, it doesn’t matter how much you plan, you need to allow space for the paint to do what it will does.”
The image we included below is a real life example of how Jay works with the flow of his paint and created an amazing piece that received many compliments from other artists in our Facebook community:
Jay mentioned that “the first thing you should look for is consistency. Sometimes, it takes a bit of time, you do have to be a little bit lenient with the type of paint you’re using because different brands are thicker than other brands. And it’s not always the more expensive brands that are the thicker paint. So you do have to play around a little bit. But once you’ve got that sorted out, then all you really need is a bit of a plan in your mind for colors, maybe composition, then go play and see what happens.”
He normally uses PVA glue with water but he has tried many and suggest that listeners can choose different paints and still have a nice piece of work in the end.
In Jay’s opinion, it’s quite tough to answer that question. There is a skill in how you get the paint out of the bottle. Stressing the pressure that which you squeeze the bottle is important and is something that will take some time to learn so patience is needed also.
“Some people say they don’t have patience for blob painting. When you start a blob painting, the first blobs, obviously are going to be larger so they will take longer to dry. You’ll probably need to leave your painting for about 24 to 36 hours for that to dry before putting on the second layer on. In some cases, it takes a week or so depending on obviously how big the canvas is.“
“This is not a quick painting. You do have to do a little bit here and a little bit there then leave it because otherwise, the paint will mix.“
Recently, Jay tried some crazy experiments like adding some blobs to other commonly known techniques such as the Dutch pour. His fascination with techniques crossing over doesn’t always work but when it does it turns out amazing and this is what causes him to keep on trying.
If you’re interested in seeing more of Jay’s blob paintings and/or want to buy some of his paintings then you can visit his Instagram or Facebook page.
This post is a fraction of the latest installment of the fluid arts podcast. Our podcast is available on YouTube as well as iTunes. Don’t forget to view it and share it with your artist friends. Also, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to join our Facebook community.
Thanks, and we look forward to sharing our next episode!
I am a UK based artist and have been making blob paintings for 1 year. Although they take longer then normal flow paintings to complete, I do get a lot of satisfaction and calm from this technique.
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Absolutely beautiful. Would you kindly email your free course as I am keen to give this a try. Even oldies can lean things!!
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