A Quest for Artistic Innovation - from Painting with Syringes to Painting on Water

Many artists strive to develop their own artistic style or a new technique through years of study, experiments and commitment to their artistic expression. Some actually succeed at that. Here are a few fascinating art technique that were invented not too long ago.

Filumizm, Lacy Surface Patterns

Artist Igor Ryazantsev works in a unique art technique that he invented and patented in December 2011. He works with syringes to create a lacy surface patterns on his paintings and currently he is the only artist in the world using this particular technique.

New style created by Igor - Filumizm - comes from the Latin word filum - "Yarn Fiber." 

Igor was painting since childhood, but it was more of a hobby than anything. Three years ago, he thought of creating his own art technique, bringing something new to the art world.

"I wanted to avoid plagiarism, looking for something new and unique, and I found it! Without touching the form, I was thinking about technique. In my head I was thinking about threads running through our modern world. I wanted to find this thread that connects things to use in my work. This thread became acrylic paint pushed out of the syringe." - says Igor

The process of creating Filumizm Art is not only time consuming, but also costly. To work in this technique also requires good physical abilities and patience. You can see more Igor's works at one of the Russian galleries.

Vologda Artist Invented the "Live" Paint

It took Pavel Smirnov, chemist and biologist from Vologda, thousands of experiments over the course of three years before creating the new type of  "smart live paint" that does the work for the artist - paints trees and fractals. He is sure that this paint with its special properties will open a new door in the art culture and empower many artists to create new art styles. 

The first samples of this amazing paint Pavel achieved in his home laboratory in 2009. As Paul says, three years he lived in constant replacement. Everywhere in the apartment there were bottles and jars of chemicals, vials with samples of paint ... Drying paintings were laying in rows of the table, the cabinet, on the window sill, on the floor, on the balcony - everywhere!

"I am interested in abstract paintings" - says the artist. - "In the replacement for new effects I was adding different chemicals to the paint that I was using. Once I discovered strange things: a drop of paint, on the surface of the canvas somehow turned into tiny trees and crystals. I became interested in this phenomenon, started reading literature on this, began to experiment with different substances, but could not repeat this effect for a long time."   

Thousands of experiments led Pavel to the birth of a new type of dye - "smart" paint, which draws what's inherent in its chemical formula. Today Smirnov's paint "paints" the dendrites (fractals) of three different colors - red, blue and green. But Pavel thinks the opportunities for this paint are endless.

"It seems incredible, but dendrites during growth behave like real living beings, as living plants!" - Says the artist. - "The growth of the dendrite from the drop of paint is very similar to the growth of a tree from a seed. First round of drops of paint protrude thin roots and branches. They grow quickly and turn into long branches. Dendrites seems to want to capture the maximum space. However, they do not conflict with each other. If the dendrite branches become close to each other, their growth slows and stops. During their growth, the dendrites seems to feel each other and avoid collisions.

This is very exciting to monitor the colors that live their lives. You put a few drops of ink on a sheet, and watch as the drops begin to rise and fight for territory."

See more samples of Pavel's amazing fractal paintings on his website.
 

Ebru Art, Turkish Paint on Water

Here is another amazing art technique involving paint that moves - Ebru Art or Turkish Paper Marbling. It's the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments on a pan of oily water and then transforming this pattern to paper. It requires a lot of practice, skill and creativity. It's believed to be invented in Turkey. 

Passion for 'Flame-Art'

Russian Artist Nikolai Gladenko has pioneered a technique of using fire to create realistic 'paintings'. It's a new variation of Pyrography (wood burning). Nikolai is using a special gas torch that was invented by famous Russian inventor Vladimir Semyonov in 1970. It can apply hot air to wood 100 times faster than any other gas torch and it also allows artist to control temperature instantly.

After 66 exhibitions in Russia and abroad, Nikolai is now teaching his unique wood burning technique for free to kids with disabilities in his studio in Novosibirsk.

See how Nikolai creates his artwork in this video from Reuters.

Master of Ten Brushes

Apparently, some inventions come from laziness. Sergey Logunov, a self-taught artist from Minsk, was tired of getting up and changing brushes, so he decided to paint with multiple brushes at the same time and that's how he invented his unusual painting technique.

You can see how Sergey paints in this video. It's in Russian, but you can still get the idea.

He started with 3 brushes, then 5 and then expanded to 10 taping them to each of his fingers. 

Sergey swears he'll never return to painting with one brush only, which angers other artists from Minsk.

"It is much more practical and a lot faster."- says Sergey - "So much so that I painted the picture before for 2-3 months on average, and now I can do it in 4-5 days."

The new technique also allows him to create new brush strokes that he says is hard to create with one brush only. However, if you can't paint with one brush, 10 won't help.

The only draw back, he says, is that right now he requires the help of others in taping brushes to his fingers. Though his friends are already working on the new type of brushes, based on his sketches, that would allow him to attach brushes to his fingers without any help.
 

The Invention that Unlocked a Locked-in Artist

This is a super inspiring video from entrepreneur Mick Ebeling on how he and a team of collaborators built an open-source invention that gave the graffiti artist TEMPT, paralyzed from head to toe, the means to create art again.

Photo Credits: 

Igor Ryazantsev's paintings by Ilya Kruchinin
Pavel Smirnov photos by Tatiana Garanina, www.krassever.ru
Nikolai Gladenko's artwork photos by Nikolai Gladenko