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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2022

Chapter 12: Spreading and Drying of Drops and Art

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Get permissions Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share The creation of visual arts is a skilful balance between materials and methods used by the artists. The physicochemical properties of the paint, the physical and mechanical properties of the support, as well as the conditions of solidification of the paint layer determine the structure of the artwork.1–3 In particular, the method of depositing the paint over a particular support is of great importance in the final artwork. Among the various painting techniques, splattering refers to a set of methods based on the use of brushes and other tools (sticks, syringes, paint cans, etc.) to throw or flick drops, jets or filaments of paint onto a support (mainly canvas or paper). This type of art requires spontaneity and improvisation depending on the style of the painter. These techniques are a part of the abstract expressionistic style of art that emerged in the 1940s. At that time, censorship forced the artists to be measured and cautious. Thus, splattering techniques allowed artists to have freedom of expression without restriction, as the final work stays abstract and open to interpretation. Pollock's style is characterised by continuous lines rather than discrete marks resulting from drop splashes. However, specific paintings appear as mixing between continuous and meandering lines and little drops, whose marks are more or less prevalent, that emerge between the long and thin paint filaments. The painting is exclusively achieved with black paint on a light background and the drops modify the visual impact; these are placed at particular locations on the painting to form a kind of drop clusters. Unlike other classical painting techniques, “drip painting” implies a physical approach to control the final appearance of the painting. Thus, the shapes of the drops, the curves or the trajectories of the paint filaments result from physical mechanisms depicted with fluid dynamics. Some authors4–6 have been interested in the work of Pollock to explain the physical mechanisms underlying the flows of paint depending on the paint parameters such as the viscosity. Particularly, Herczynski et al.4 explained with scaling laws the techniques intuitively implemented by Pollock to produce a continuous thread of paint. Besides, they could explain the traces made of oscillatory lines observed on paper. These traces result from the instability of a free viscous jet which is the continuous thread of paint streaming from the brush when Pollock creates. American artist Sam Francis used the “drip painting” technique but, unlike Pollock, the paintings are mainly composed of discrete drop splashes or sprayed dots on the supports. The complex textured patterns are related to the way the drop impacts the support. Indeed, spreading and receding processes with possible partial rebound result in smooth or ragged-edged splashes. Patterns are determined by the impacting surface properties, the liquid parameters (viscosity, density, surface tension) as well as the gas surrounding the drop.7 Hence, the artists used to change the viscosity of their paints by changing the composition to achieve the desire effect or appearance. Artists use many types of paints including oil, acrylic, and watercolour. Additional mechanisms occur in the case of watercolour paintings where water-based inks are traditionally deposited over porous and absorbent papers.6,8 In this way watercolour ink drops spreading, imbibition and drying result in a multitude of patterns. This method is particularly used by the artists to obtain “softer” patterns are described in Section 12.2.
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hal-03995765 , version 1 (18-02-2023)

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F. Giorgiutti-Dauphiné, N. Sugawara-Beda, Ludovic Pauchard. Chapter 12: Spreading and Drying of Drops and Art. Royal Society of Chemistry. Drying of Complex Fluid Drops: Fundamentals and Applications, 14, Brutin, D. and Sefiane, K.; Royal Society of Chemistry, pp.215-230, 2022, Soft Matter Series, 9781788017909. ⟨10.1039/9781839161186-00215⟩. ⟨hal-03995765⟩
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