My “Pollock-like” shirt

A few days ago, I watched the movie Pollock(2000), as required in one of my assignments of my art online course. I love that movie. The movie is in a way kind of depressing because Pollock is an alcoholic who is talented but impulsive. He struggles with alcoholism his whole life and it led to his tragic ending—car crash and death. But on the other side, his inspiration and dedication for art is respectable. He led the most modern view of art during his time period. Inventing the “drip” technique, he gained as much fame as controversy. The technique was basically pouring pigments using hardened brushes, sticks, and so on as paint applicators.

Personally, I love this technique. To me, it sounds much more difficult to draw because the paint applicator is hold in the air during the whole process of painting. Of course, Jackson Pollock had no problem with that, because he was so skillful in art and had a good control of the brush. But I’m not. I thought it would be easy to create a “Pollock-like” shirt in 10 minutes, but I was wrong.

Problems occurred. I used watercolor pigments and brushes. The thing was, the pigments wouldn’t drip continuously from the brush, but dripped in drops. So the pigments were like spots, not pretty lines, on my white shirt. I tried several times, but I failed them all. I guessed it was the problem of my brush and my paint. My brush is the kind that holds the watercolor very well and my paint wasn’t viscoce enough. Despite all, I successfully created the artwork by using three watercolors: yellow, green and white.