Inside the dripping

Artist

Jackson Pollack is a famous abstract expression artist in the world. He created the so-called action art. He used sticks as his tools to create his artwork, and he liked to paint on a large canvas on the floor. Then he could feel everything on his painting from a larger scale, and that was the way he put himself totally into his painting. He didn't have any main ideas during painting, but just followed his feelings and actions. There were no boundaries between lines and color in his painting, showing his unconventional breakthrough.

Work

This is a typical example of Jackson Pollock's artwork. Firstly it shows a large scale of this painting. Dark colors like black and brown work together with white form a large contrast. Random curves and irregular dots are the most frequent symbols in this painting, since he created his painting by dripping and splashing paint. No two lines are exactly the same shape, and no two dots are exactly the same size. There is no rule of forming this painting, but whatever Pollock wanted it to be.

Response

 This painting doesn't show too much nonconformity. We can see nearly every line and every dot clearly, as if we can visualize how Pollock created this painting. Just like Pollock said, he wanted to give his painting life. Those lines are "shaking" in the picture. Also, the strong contrast of the color makes every dot and line clearer. From the curvature of lines, it can be told that Pollock painted this picture from all directions. Different dimensions make this picture more interesting. The reason why Pollock prefers to use sticks and brushes is they are easy to splash the paint onto canvas.

I drew the first one using a webpage called "drips". That is not a finished one. Though I can control the color of my pen and background, it looks not real. The lines are all straight and rigid, showing no sense of real curves. Therefore I stopped using that tool.

Surprisingly I found a webpage called jackson pollock painting. I just need to move my mouse, and then curves and dots appear on the webpage. The whole thing looks so real, as if I was splashing paint. Dots are made when I stopped my pen. The only drawback is I could not control the pen. Whenever I move my mouse, it will paint something, so I have to keep painting. Dots also appear in the places that I didn't expect. Moreover, the only color I have is black, so the painting does not show a lot contents. Nevertheless, it is the best splashing tool I have. Other painting tools cannot produce a line with changing width. 

Reflection

First of all, I do not think any of my work captured the style of Pollock's painting at all. Both of them have restrictions, which is the largest contradiction with Pollock's style. Pollock just painted whatever he thought of, and the large scale provided him with the space to paint. But my paint is either restricted by shape of curvature or constrained by colors and expressions.

Pollock's work makes me think of the time when I was painting the fence. Since we did not have enough paint, we just splashed the paint onto the fence. When I splashed the paint, I didn't know why I did that, but I knew what kind of shape I wanted to make, like a concave-up or an "S" line. At that time I felt I did not have any thoughts of what I was doing, but I just did it, following my feeling and actions. That experience is so similar to Pollock's painting process. 

With that experience and together with the learning of Pollock's painting, I don't think his work can be reproduced digitally. On computer people cannot feel the weight of brush. People do not know how to paint a concave-down curve. People will not feel that they are together with painting. People can be painter through digital technology, but they cannot put themselves into their art.