Siqueiros “accidental painting” technique

28 August 2014 / Workshops

http://physicscentral.com/explore/plus/accidental-painting.cfm

When artist David Alfaro Siqueiros first discovered his “accidental painting” technique in the 1930s, the simplicity of the process coupled with its elaborate results riveted him. Siqueiros simply poured different color paints onto a wooden panel, allowing the different colors to spread, coalesce, and infiltrate one another.

Black paint, for instance, tends to be less dense than white paint. Consequently, Zenit and Zetina found that pouring white paint onto black paint would lead to the desired mixing. Black on white, however, would not.

—Brian Jacobsmeyer

After I had found this information on Siqueiros accidental painting technique, I was so excited that I wanted to try it out straight away. I started with pouring diluted black  Montmartre acrylic on a timber board and added diluted white Montmartre  acrylic after that. As it was just an experiment, I was a bit reluctant to use my expensive acrylic. I turned the board several times until I was happy with the resulting pattern. To give it a bit of extra interest I added some red acrylic and dribbled it across the board before the black and white paint had dried. To my big surprise the result was really better than expected.

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