What do you know about how Willem de Kooning painted?

Question

Or Joan Mitchell? Jackson Pollock? Any suggestions about products and techniques they used? I am no Norman Rockwell.

Answer 1

They were Abstract Expressionist painters.
Abstract Expressionism was a painting movement in which artists typically applied paint rapidly, and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and emotions, painting gesturally, non-geometrically, sometimes applying paint with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas. Their work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be accident and chance, but which is actually highly planned. Some Abstract Expressionist artists were concerned with adopting a peaceful and mystical approach to a purely abstract image. Usually there was no effort to represent subject matter. Not all work was abstract, nor was all work expressive, but it was generally believed that the spontaneity of the artists' approach to their work would draw from and release the creativity of their unconscious minds. The expressive method of painting was often considered as important as the painting itself.

Artists who painted in this style include Hans Hoffman (German-American, 1880-1966), Adolph Gottlieb (American, 1903-1974), Mark Rothko (American, 1903-1970), Willem De Kooning (Dutch-American, 1904-1997), Clyfford Still (American, 1904-1980), Barnett Newman (American, 1905-1970), Franz Kline (American, 1910-1962), William Baziotes (American, 1912-1963), Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956), Philip Guston (American, 1913-1980), Ad Reinhardt (American, 1913-1967), Robert Motherwell (American, 1915-1991), Sam Francis (American, 1923-1994), and Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928-). Abstract Expressionism originated in the 1940s, and became popular in the 1950s.

Answer 2

Go to a bookstore and look up the painters. There are great biographies and you can order many of them via amazon.com at low used or new prices. Most talk about their techniques and whay they painted as they did,

Answer 3

jackson took a stick and dipped it into a can (like a can of housepaint) of paint then flicked the paint onto the canvas. De kooning squeezed paint out of a tube onto a knife then scraped the knife onto the canvas.

Answer 4

They simply took "pychic automatism" into a larger step forward, and wasted their canvases with their neo-surrealist techniques of fast, action-driven brush strokes creating an image of their chemistry of emotions, thoughts, and feelings - nothing but, Abstract Expressionism.

Answer 5

i don't like modern expressionist painting, but here is a site