Science desk
< July 17	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 19 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 18[edit]

Thinners for painting with blood[edit]

When painting with blood, can a blood thinner be used as a substitute for a paint thinner? 2602:306:B894:1530:80E0:BFF6:58F:9A2 (talk) 21:42, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's a new one. Blood is mostly water, so it follows that water would serve to thin it out. I don't think adding ground-up baby aspirin to it would be very useful. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:13, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Water is the wrong osmolarity, it will lyse all the cells, and will definitely make it clot. Fgf10 (talk) 10:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And the only way the blood thinner could work is to filter it through one's body first. (Not tht I would recommend doing that unless under a doctor's care.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In this context, the OP is looking for an anticoagulant, which work fine outside the body, or we could never do any blood tests. No need to 'filter it through the body'. Things like heperin, EDTA, citrate etc will all work fine. Fgf10 (talk) 13:26, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A blood thinner stops coagulation, so if you don't want blood clots to form during the painting process, blood thinners might be a good idea. StuRat (talk) 23:35, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Blood thinner" is a "folksy" term, rather than one that reflects medical reality. It can mean a drug that interferes with platelet function, or a drug that interferes with the clotting cascade. But the fact that "paint thinner" and "blood thinner" both share the word "thinner" is meaningless; an antiplatelet drug or an anticoagulent have nothing in common with a substance that decreases the viscosity or pigment concentration of paint. As StuRat points out, an anticoagulant like EDTA might be useful, but that has nothing to do with "thinning" the blood with drugs. FWIW, Vincent Castiglia seems to use sodium citrate as his anticoagulant (light blue-top Vacutainer tubes) - Nunh-huh 00:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC) P.S. There's a difference between drugs which have their effect only in vivo (either by requiring metabolization or affecting organs like the liver) and substances which can effect clotting in vitro. - Nunh-huh 00:11, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sodium citrate is used to prevent clotting during blood donation Wymspen (talk) 09:34, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, best option. Can be bought online easily. 0.32% is normally used for blood. Fgf10 (talk) 10:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are paintings made with blood classified as a biohazard or can it be rendered safe by pasteurization or other processes? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is dead. It is no more a biohazard than breathing the countless millions of dead skin cells floating around in any public building from all the people who go into them. And pasteurization doesn't make something safe for ever, pasteurized milk starts being colonized by bacteria as soon as you open it. I hope you're not one of those people who washes their hands every five minutes worrying about things like that. Dmcq (talk) 11:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This source[1] and quite a few others disagree. Google the subject and you'll find out. The point being that while the blood itself is dead, it can contain toxic microorganisms that are alive and well, and hazardous. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:32, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Everyday life is hazardous and there are people in bubble tents because of it. Dried blood on a painting surface is no more dangerous than the air they breathe anyway. And that quora is silly talking about blood and c. difficile that way, it passes via faeces and spores from it normally and if it was in the blood they would probably not have been happily painting using their blood. I was talking about real life and the hazards that have real possibilities. Worryy about people shaking hands with you if you're going to worry about that - it is a much much more real possibility then. Dmcq (talk) 14:00, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not worried at all. it's the OP who should maybe be worried. "Let the painter beware." And, yes, we are advised to wash hands frequently during cold-and-flu season, as you can pick up the bug from any surface as well as from other humans. Wearing surgical masks, as you often see at events in the orient, might be excessive. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:47, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Willem de Kooning mixed his own paints from unusual media; and didn't always tell anyone what he did. Back in the 1990s I worked in a analytical chemistry lab that, as a project with a local art history/restoration group, was trying to analyze what his paints actually were made of. I don't remember blood coming up specifically, but knowing what was found through various analytical techniques, I would not be shocked if he used blood. I think I remember, for example, that he used commercial mayonnaise as a tempera base, and some of his paints decayed considerably in a short time due to their unusual composition. See Here and look for the name Susan Lake. I didn't do this work directly, but it was done in the same lab I worked in. Also see Kiss (comics)#Marvel Comics, where actual blood was used in the ink printed in the first comic of the series. --Jayron 32 19:38, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to go with a "no" on the original question. Paint thinner doubtless can be used for all sorts of artsy things, but the most significant is that you use it to get oil paint off a brush. I could be so wrong, but I think you wouldn't normally paint a landscape in chartreuse and paint thinner. By contrast, anticoagulants might be used productively to add to blood before painting to keep it from randomly clotting while wet and leaving gaps of clear amid the red (though if you're this deep into ... art, then maybe this is not what you want...) But if blood does clot, they will not get it off your brush. In theory you might clean the brush with tissue plasminogen activator, but now we've gone from sillier to silliest.

As for the biohazard issue, well, yes; there are companies like this that could clean up such a painting for a goodly fee. Wnt (talk) 11:21, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Surely that is the point where a Winston Wolfe reference is mandatory. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 11:58, 19 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]