Creating Abstracts with Oil and Water

Well, today I had a moment of inspiration, which lead to a rare burst of creativity... and I have @anitahorvatirl's fantastic post to thank for that. Go check out her blog... lots of cool stuff to see :-)

Anyway. The time of year is cold and wet, and as I couldn't really go outside I was looking to find a project to do inside. I had seen some fascinating abstract images featuring water and oil elsewhere on the internet, and I was considering giving it go... and as chance would have it when I logged onto Peakd this morning, I stumbled across Anita's fantastic little post about some of the pictures she took recently featuring the aforementioned oil and water concept.

They were lovely pictures, but what caught my attention was the last image in which she shared her setup, quite literally a small glass full of water, some drops of oil in the top of it, and the glass was resting on top of the phone.

I was staggered! The setup was so basic and simple, and yet so effective!

I decided I immediately had to try it out

So here was my set up.

On my phone I searched for 'multicoloured background', chose a suitable image and made it fill the screen. On top of the phone was a glass of water, and then I had a small amount of vegetable oil ready to add to it.

As I realized there was no way to take the oil out (without washing the glass out and starting again) I decided to add the oil one drop at a time and see what happened...

oh wait... I think I need to turn the brightness of the screen up to its maximum level

That's better! Now to add another drop of oil...

Thats pretty cool eh?

I carried on for a few minutes; adding oil, letting the water settle, and then see if anything interesting happened.

There is a lot of trial and error with this concept, each time I add the oil the shapes change, sometimes its better, and sometimes it isn't quite as good.

I was shooting with a really low aperture for all of these. Partly this was down to lack of light (it was a very gloomy day, hence why I was inside). The other reason was to get a smooth background, so that the abstract circles created by the oi could be the sole focus of the image.

As first attempts go, I'm reasonably happy with how these images turned out. I am slighly disapointed with all the 'flotsam and jetsam' that seem to be floating around in the water. I was really careful not to stir the water, and placed the oil in gently, and I've got all these bubbles floating around.

In the end I decided to take a couple of the images into photoshop, and edited the bubbles out, but that took awhile. I need to see if I can do something different to prevent these happening. A couple of guides online mention using bottled water, so I'll give that a go next time...

I'll leave it here with a couple of the finished images... I can't to try this again and see what other cool abstract images I can create!

Thank you for reading, I hope you found it interesting.

If you have any thoughts or opinions on this article then I'd love to see your comments.
And if you really like the content then maybe you would like to upvote or re-hive it.

All Photos taken by @dannewton unless otherwise stated.
Check out my website for more of my work.

500px - Redbubble