Six years ago, Roger Saints picked up some acrylic paints and got to work.

He’d had no lessons aside from the few demonstrations he had seen on YouTube, but, with practice, soon mastered various acrylic pour techniques.

“I can't remember why I was online, but I ended up seeing one of these painting videos, and it was all about acrylic-paint painting techniques,” he said.

“They used a lot of different colours and they were all so bright and vibrant and colourful, and I like that sort of stuff.”

He hadn’t taken an art class since high school, and his job as a police officer wasn’t at all creative, but he thought the painting method would be “interesting to learn”.

“I ended up watching a few videos then I bought some paints and then I just tried it. And the very first thing that I tried, I just fell in love with it.”

Happy with what he produced, he put pieces on exhibit at the Bermuda Society of Arts and was thrilled to discover that visitors to the City Hall gallery liked them, too.

“I sold a few of my paintings, and then that’s kind of where it all started. People just loved them,” he said. “Paint pouring is not only for canvasses. I’ve also painted fan blades, light switches and table tops to match room decor.”

Other shows followed, and interest in his work continued to grow.

“I sold a few to a few friends of mine I work with and then [through] word of mouth [it took] off so I sold a few more.”

Today, Mr Saints’s art is available alongside colourful handmade pieces inspired by Bermuda at Resin Art Patricia, the store on York Street, St George’s, that he and his wife, Patricia, opened this year.

When his wife started making her resin art, he put his own painting on hold to help with the business.

“I've got a few left in the shop in St George's, and I'll do a few more once we get a few more sold,” he said.

Mr Saints’s paintings usually measure about 8in x 11in, although he has completed one as large as three feet.

The time needed to complete each piece can vary considerably.

“You're planning, you're mixing your paints, and then getting them on the canvas. Then you have to let it dry. So a painting will take, from start to finish, probably a couple weeks by the time I get my resin coating on it to protect it.”

For each painting, he chooses from a range of techniques. A Dutch pour typically uses air from a hairdryer or a drinking straw to glide paint across the canvas; a ring pour uses a cup, with paint poured in a circular motion that ultimately resembles tree rings. With a dirty pour, multiple colours are combined in a container and then put on canvas.

“It's all these different types of ways you manipulate paints on the canvas. Another one is a marble pour, where you use marbles to manipulate the paint and make different designs. There’s so many different types of pours, and you can pick whatever you want, you can add a few of them together. The possibilities are endless,” the artist said.

It was the effect created by those techniques that first fascinated Mr Saints. Until he came across the videos online, he had admired similar artwork without knowing how it was produced.

“And then one day, I just stumbled across it on some social-media platform [and then started] to check [lessons on] YouTube videos. I thought it looked pretty interesting and [was] something I could probably do if I put my mind to it.”

His experiments with acrylic pouring eventually also introduced Mr Saints and his wife to resin art. He initially used resin as a protective coating for his paintings before Mrs Saints began exploring what else could be made with it.

“I just like the shiny look and the finish; it makes the colours pop,” he said.

“We started looking at YouTube videos and then that's how we ended up crossing over to the items that we have in the shop, to everything that we make now.”

Although he quickly became comfortable with the different pouring techniques, deciding which paints will work successfully together still requires some thought.

“My hardest part is the colour co-ordination. Certain colours if you put them right next to each other, they muddy, they'll turn brown. So yeah, my biggest thing is making sure the colour combination stays bright and colourful, like how I want,” he said.

His first attempt was deliberately small, allowing him to experiment without committing too much paint or money to something he had never tried before.

“I did my very first one on two pieces of cardboard. They were probably about two inches by four inches — just a little practice piece so I could see what it looked like before I wasted a whole bunch of money on paints and stuff. And I was really impressed. I still have them.”

Today, part of the appeal remains the unpredictability of the finished work. The pouring techniques create abstract patterns that can suggest completely different things depending on who is looking at them.

“The thing I like about these is we can both look at the same painting and see something totally different. It's interesting.”

• Resin Art Patricia, at 31 York Street, is open Monday to Saturday from 9.30am to 5pm, and Sunday from 10am to 4pm