▷ How to Paint Like Jackson Pollock ◁ Step by Step Tutorial

everyone Cody here and today I'm gonna show you how to paint like Jackson Pollock and I know I have similar videos on this channel about this very topic but none of those videos really show you from beginning to end how to make this type of painting I simply talk about the brushstrokes and the paint and stuff that I use the tools and so I figured it was high time for you to see how I make Jackson Pollock style paintings so in this video I'll talk about a lot of things about the technique and the tools

and the materials and then we'll kind of talk about at the end what I did wrong and I say that because I already knew it was going to happen but in order to get this video done I just kind of had to do it in one fell swoop so anyway let's begin so the first thing that you'll notice is that I'm starting off using gloss enamel right that's pretty much my mo is using gloss enamel on all my paintings now there are some times where I use acrylic but it's very rare but this is this

this black is actually not the the common paint that I use it's actually a paint that I got on sale but I didn't end up liking it I was just trying to use it up and get rid of it but you'll notice that on the first paint like that first bucket of paint I was using the paint stick to make these really thick and thin lines so I really like using paint sticks as my main tool because you can you know it's kind of a nice length to it so you can you can swing it

you can trip it you can do a lot of things with it and since it comes with the paint usually it's very easy to obtain them next I moved on to blue and this blue that I'm using is a dark blue almost like a navy blue and I'm using a rubber spatula that has the little rubbery part at the end and I say that because you're gonna see that I'm gonna use a different one after this now this was my go-to tool for a long time when I was still doing Pollock style paintings I don't

really do Pollock style paintings anymore I really just did this for the video so that people could see the process because I've talked about it but I've never really shown it but yeah this was my go-to tool is you know using the plastic handled spatulas with the big with the thicker rubber end at the end but again I've kind of grown to like using the wooden paint sticks just because they give you so much control but they're great for splashing or dripping because the special that has that that end on it that kind of collects

the paint and then you can kind of throw it if you do with this stick it's a lot thinner you know swipes piles so here you can see that I'm really kind of throwing it to create big drops and I know that the the painting is enough zoomed in so I do apologize but hopefully you can kind of see the pieces that they're made really it's not so much about the little pieces but the action itself and say a lot of people criticize Jackson Pollock paintings for for what they see when they look at it

but really it's not about the Jackson Pollock painting and really what you look at a lot of it has to do with the action of maining the paint making the painting and what Pollock talked about in his interviews is that for him painting the piece was as much as the piece itself and I think that that's very that makes a lot of sense especially when you make this style of painting so it's not about just a bunch of trips and lines and splashes it's more about the work that you're putting in to make it so

it's more about the action really than it is the finished piece so now I've moved on to orange and the reason I'm using these colors is because I was using the colors of two of his more famous paintings blue poles and convergence and so I kind of wanted to use similar colors in making this painting that I can show you guys so you can see that I here I'm using a different type of rubber spatula so this one here is a it's a thin full lie I guess it's covered in rubber but the whole thing

is covered it doesn't have like a plastic handle with a thick end on it it's literally the whole thing is just like a soft rubber that's that makes it into like one thin piece I think I got it like Walmart or Michaels or something but it is a rubber spatula but the whole thing is covered in rubber so instead of it being like the other one which two pieces this this whole thing is the rubber spatula so I don't know how to describe it in a way that makes sense but anyway so next we're gonna

move on to yellow and you it's hard to see but I am wearing gloves always wear gloves want to use glass enamel and destroys things so we've got a bright yellow here and I am using now I'm just using the back of a paintbrush so this is this was a common thing that Pollock used he used you know the back of paintbrushes even use sticks so here I'm using the back of the pain depression this is actually how I started making these paintings was using the back of paintbrushes and then I kind of branched out

and tried other things what's nice about the paintbrush is that it can give you some really thin lines and you can flick it very easily so it creates very big erratic splashes so that's what's kind of nice about using the back of the paintbrush now I'd like to talk about two things before I forget and get to the end of the video and I didn't cover them so the first is one thing you will not see me use that Pollock tended to use was turkey basters and I'm not talking about the ones that you stab

in in this turkey but the big bold ones so they'd like the bulb at the end and then they have the glass or the plastic tube I will not be using that because I've found that it just ruins them and any time I've tried to do it it's never worked out for me I'm trying to suck up the pain and then splash it on there so I don't even bother plus that's you know I'm not trying to be Pollock I'm just trying to you know create something similar because you know I I revere him so

you will not see me use that but that is another tool used a lot the second thing is that I did not let these layers dry and so that was the thing that I was going to talk to you about that I made a mistake on so normally when I make these paintings I will well two things one when I make these paintings I'll let them dry because it's usually hot or outside I mean I'm recording this in February and it's cold outside so the paint did not drive before I moved on each next layer

in a normal circumstance like if I were to make one of these I would let the paint dry at least a little bit to kind of give it a little bit of a shell or else all of the colors just start to run together which you're going to see at the end when I pan out okay so here you know you can see that I've moved on the white white is the last color that I'll add and then I'll kind of stack on a little bit of the other colors but even here the black and

some of the other colors were starting to bleed together so it's kind of making this pool of colors and yes it kind of has its own look to it that's kind of cool but at the same time it kind of ruins the painting from at least for me because I don't I like seeing the distinct layers so it kind of ruined it for me but again I'm just using the paint stick here using white and then pretty much to finish this painting off I would just go over it again with some of the colors until

it had the balance that I was looking for so I mean that's really it so these are a lot of these are the main tools that I use to create these Pollock style paintings really it's it's kind of like dripping it you know like like you see here let's see what time is it it's at nine eleven so well that's terrible time anyway you can see that I'm just kind of running over it to create some some almost like cursive looking lines right some curves but then you know you also go over hand to create

the splashes or you can throw the paint on or you can just kind of drip it doesn't matter of a chore painting and I actually ended up destroying this painting to be honest with you after it was done because I didn't like the look of it I may actually repaint the canvas white because I I actually scraped all the paint off and clean the canvas before dried that's that's just to show you or just to tell you how how I did not let those layers dry and I really don't like that but that's pretty much

it guys I mean it's it's a gloss enamel paint just doing on canvas right you could now Pollock usually does it on flat canvas or he usually did do it on black canvas so it wasn't stretched it was he would just get a roll of canvas roll it out and paint on it but I don't have any small rolls of canvas and I didn't want to waste it I just kind of wanted to show you guys the process and talk about it so that's pretty much it I think I finished with yellow and then I'm

going to show you the painting but that's pretty much it guys if you have any questions about it please leave them in the comment section or check out my other videos because I do talk more in depth about the Pollock style so I'm going to show you the painting and then that's pretty much it and yeah other than that guys I really hope that you have an awesome esterday and enjoyed this video and yeah that's like this so have a good rest of your day take care