Year 9 are studying Jackson Pollock and have seen Hans Namuth's film of him painting, shot in 1950, which moves too fast to show how each mark is made. The teacher lays a primed canvas on a covered floor and pours thinned black acrylic from a stick in three ways, a slow low pass, a fast sweep and a sharp flick, while a school tablet on a stand films each pour in slow motion. Played back on the board, the slow pass shows the stream thinning to a thread and folding into loops as it lands, the sweep draws a long line that swells where the hand slows, and the flick breaks the stream into a spray of droplets. The teacher pauses at each moment so students can sketch the stream in the air beside the mark it left, and they finish by writing three rules for making each kind of mark, ready to test them in next week's practical.
Tools: Built-in camera (slow motion and time-lapse) Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.