Who’s that? Well… he was an artist that was the first American abstract painter. He was born on January 28, 1912 and past away on August 11, 1956. Jack The Dripper is what they called him but his real name was Jackson Pollock. Why did they call him Jack The Dripper? They called him that because he made his paintings with splatters and blobs of paint everywhere. He used all kinds of materials like sticks, paint brushes, paint, and actually he put some materials into his paint like glass, sand, and string.
The way Jackson Pollock painted his paintings was unique. He put a big piece of canvas on the ground instead of putting it up on the wall or on an easel, so that he could be in the painting and with the painting too. He would dance around it and flick the paint onto the canvas.
The image on the left is one that I made on jacksonpollock.org . Ms. Rogerson introduced us to this website and it’s really interesting and fun! When you go slow with your mouse the line gets fatter and makes a bunch of blobs but when you go fast the line that you create gets really really thin. The site was made to let you create a painting of your own in Jackson Pollock’s style.
I have a question for you. What do you think art is to you? Ms. Rogerson asked the same thing! We had to have a partner to talk to. My partner was my friend Maddie and what we said was that to us art was getting your feelings out and your expressions. Jackson Pollock was a not to happy man. His paintings were the way he got his feelings out.
There are 7 elements that Ms. Rogerson talked to us about and those 7 were…
- Shape - Shapes are created by lines. Negative shapes are outside the outlined shape and positive shapes are on the inside of the outline. Shapes can be regular such as cirlce, triangle, squares, rectangles, etc. They can be irregular such as paint splatters and ink blots
- Form – When shapes are bent or placed together to create width, height and length a form is created. Common forms are: Cylinders, cones, spheres, cubes, pyramids, prisms. Forms are used to create sculptures.
- Space – Creating a flat image to create an illusion of form. Space can be dreated by overlapping oblects, changing size and distance, and using perspective by drawing on flat surface and create an impression of their relative position and size
- Texture – Texture is all around us and can be explored by touching and looking at the objects in the enviroment. Texture can be felt and seen with a rough and smooth rosk, and can be drawn by repeating shapes and lines in pictures or drawings.
- Value – Value is the scale of lightness of a single colour to its darkness of that same colour. Any colour may be amde into a colour scale by gradually mixing white paint for lightness and black paint for darkness.
- Line – Lines could be straight or curved, repeated and combined, different lengths and widths, and can be used to express emotions and create overall drawings. There are an infinite number of combinations that one can make with lines.
- Colour – Colours are created by reflections of light at different wavelengths. Primary colours are blue, yellow, and red. Secondary colours are orange, green and violet. Compimentary colours yellow/violet, red/green and blue/orange. Warm colours are: orange, yellow and red. Cool colours are: Blue, green and violet. Tertiary colours are made by mixing secondary colours.
Three elements that Jackson Pollock used in his art were texture, colour and line. The way he made the texture was by putting paints over top of other paint and by adding string, glass and sand to the canvas. He used colour by mixing different colours together and last but not least he made lines by using his paint brush or stick and slashing his arms in any direction.
My painting looks like a Pollock painting, but there are differences bewteen it and a real one. My painting is on the computer and his was on canvas which he put on the ground. He had more control over his paintings because he could choose whatever colour he wanted and add texture to his art. One more difference is that I can’t dance around my computer to make one of his paintings, but he definitely could!
I’d love to hear your comments about his art. Do you know anything else about Jackson Pollock?
Filed under: Art, Assigned Work, Blogging | Tagged under Abstract, Art, Jackson Pollock, Materials, Splatters | 2 Comments »
