Dendritic Painting

A group I belong to met today to have a try with Dendritic Painting.  This is a very simple process of squashing paint between two sheets of glass, prising them apart to see the wonderful pattern they make and taking a print from them on fabric or paper.  The definition of a dendrite is

1. a short branched extension of a nerve cell, along which impulses received from other cells at synapses are transmitted to the cell body.
2. 
   

   a crystal or crystalline mass with a branching, tree-like structure.

I think you will be able to see, in the pictures below, why it is called 'dendritic' painting. 

I'll talk you through the process to show you how we achieved our prints.

First drop small blobs of acrylic paint onto a sheet of glass

We found less was more in this instance as it produced a finer print

Next place the second sheet of glass on top of these blobs and squish down firmly.

I just love how these blobs form perfect circles!

(the oval shape is the stripe in the first picture)

To reveal the dendritic process, carefully prise the sheets of glass apart.

Just look at the beautiful patterns that form!

You are now ready to take your print.  We found the first one was not always the most successful so this picture shows the second (left) and third (right) print on paper.

These are very simple prints to show how easy the process is but you can make them as complicated as you wish, mixing shapes, colours and even double printing. The ones below show some of my experiments from today.

There are many more pictures showing what the other ladies created, far too many to add to this blog post.  I've made the folder available on google drive so if you click this link you should be able to see many more of what we created today.

Have fun!