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August 11, 2005

Anatomy of Splatter II

flinging the paint about a bit

You have to balance the blot and splatter. It's getting the consistency right: too thick and there’s no splatter, too thin and there’s no blot.

Drop the paint from on high:
dropped-02.jpg

or scoop it out and fling it at the canvas à la Jackson Pollock:
blots-01.jpg

Dash it across the canvas straight from the pot:
blots-02.jpg

or flick it from the end of the big palette knife:
dropped-01.jpg


All have different results. None of which looks particularly like paint flung from a bucket, but we’ll get to that later.

Other famous flung paint stories: Ruskin accusing Whistler of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”.

Ruskin said he “"never expected to hear a coxcomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face"

Whistler sued Ruskin for libel. The defence lawyers asked him if he thought the two days he spent painting Nocturne was worth 200 guineas: "No", Whistler replied, "I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime."

Posted by john at August 11, 2005 11:15 PM

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