The Fluid Mechanics of splat painting

In art, splat painting consists in subjecting a paint-loaded brush to an acceleration (for example by "flicking" the brush or tapping its handle) to detach paint filaments or droplets. These are projected onto the canvas, leaving aesthetic filamentary or spotty patterns. In this technique, perhaps most emblematically used by American painters Jackson Pollock and Sam Francis, the brush never touches the canvas, making the control of the final pattern challenging for the artist. In this study, we develop an experimental setup to produce repeatable tapping on a paint-loaded brush, mimicking the acceleration imposed by the artist's hand. Using a Newtonian model liquid, we characterize how the amount of paint detached and its final spatial distribution on the substrate depend on control parameters such as paint viscosity and brush acceleration. This allows us to identify different splatting regimes and understand how artists adjust these parameters to tune the final splatter pattern.