A Trained Body

The drips were not careless. Pollock thinned ordinary house paint to a specific consistency he learned by feel. Too thin and it splattered into nothing. Too thick and it would not pour. Getting it right took years of practice.

The motion mattered just as much. Filmed artists copying his method show that Pollock worked in steady, repeating sweeps of the arm, almost like a dance, spreading paint evenly across the whole canvas. Try it cold and you get clumps and dead spots — the opposite of his even, woven surfaces.