Using concepts from painting

We present a new visualization method for 2D flows which allows us to combine multiple data values in an image for simultaneous viewing. We utilize concepts from oil painting, art and design as introduced in (Laidlaw et al., 1998) to examine problems within fluid mechanics. We use a combination of discrete and continuous visual elements arranged in multiple layers to visually represent the data. The representations are inspired by the brush strokes artists apply in layers to create an oil painting. We display commonly visualized quantities such as velocity and vorticity together with three additional mathematically derived quantities: the rate of strain tensor, and the turbulent charge and turbulent current. We describe the motivation for simultaneously examining these quantities and use the motivation to guide our choice of visual representation for each particular quantity. We present visualizations of three flow examples and observations concerning some of the physical relationships made apparent by the simultaneous display technique that we employed.