How To Create Effective Ink Splatters With Black And White Paint

How to create the best ink splatters with black and white paint or drawing inks. There is a technique for doing this and one that we'll run through right here. All you need is a few items to help you and they are fairly inexpensive.

You will need:- 

Black and white acrylic paint or drawing inks

A toothbrush

An old paintbrush

Tub of water to thin your paint slightly

A sheet of white or black paper (your own preference and also based on what drawing you;ve already done)

Now of course if you are using white paint or drawing ink, you must have a solid black background on your art so that it shows up very effectively as a great spatter. And also vice versa for white backgrounds with black paint for ink splatters.

In the following video I run you through some of the ways that I introduce ink splatter to my drawings with white and black paint. The splatters will vary with each different tool as you'll see in the video, the Toothbrush creates the finest spray of paint and you could combine this with the paint brush method to vary the size of the ink blobs falling on your drawing.

Here's the link also - How to add ink splatter to your drawings to create depth

Remember, the thicker the paint and less watered down the paint, the brighter the white will show up. and also black paint or ink will show up darker too and not a grey colour.

I will look at other ways to create ink spatter as I bet there are some quite inventive ways to use this technique.

Dealing With Negative Space On Your Drawings And Artworks

Negative space on your drawings and illustrations is something that really becomes important especially when you are thinking about any particular drawing you are working on in the moment. You'll be able to spot areas in your art that don't really look right and you can't sometimes work out how to address it so that your illustrations don't look odd.

Here I will show you a couple of drawings were I drew the central image of a Zombie and a Demon, two totally different ink drawings and when I completed the basic ink work on these drawings I knew that I wasn't going to draw a scene or something in the background, But I didn't know what to do to fill the empty white space surrounding the drawings, so I mulled over what to do over a week later. The artwork looked ok as it was, but I knew I wanted something to cancel out that white space surrounding the undead creatures.

    

I was just adding black paint to another illustration and I had some left over black acrylic on my palette and so I decided to use a dry brush technique of loosely using rough paint strokes that would frame the illustrations and it really was a simple way of filling in the white space or the negative space, but it added some depth to the drawing and something that was unintended, but worked.

You can see in the photos below by painting some contrasting black paint in a dry brush technique with paint strokes aiming towards the middle of the art, it not only draws more focus to the centre which is the main area of interest of your illustration, it can also form the basis of further ink work such as ink splatters later on that will help your artwork even further.

If you can figure out how to work with your minds eye and your Artists eye you can balance the use of negative space quite well in a drawing and create a drawing you are happy with. This also works with ink splatter and other and even by adding other blocks of colour to the papers surface, just see what works for you.

Working On A The Thing Commission And Art Print

Currently working on a The Thing commission which is turning out quite well as the client 

wanted an original creature drawing that had a look of the original from the movie, but was it's own creature if that makes sense. So I decided to keep the dog head element and the top creatures head from the film so it was recognizable and also the colour scheme helps tie in the design to The Thing as well.

I've been using Copic Markers to lay down the base colours of the creature design with warm greys which help to define the shadowed areas before going over them areas with Faber Castell Polycromos color pencils for the blended shades and details.

For now, all I need to do to finish this drawing is to carry on with the details and make the colours really solid and vibrant so that I can transfer this design digitally to make good quality art prints later on.

I'll show the finished design when it's done and also when I have the prints in hand.

Drawing A Death Metal Demon Head Timelapse

Drawing a Death Metal style Demon Head timelapse. In this video I gloss over the drawing of a demons head and try and make it as cool looking as possible in just black and white ink and paint. I'll do a full real time drawing video edit of this at some point, but for now this video gives a rough insight into the drawing process and how I work to draw horror death metal concepts.

For me, I just love the contrasting black and whites using ink and paint and seeing how the two colours compliment each other, especially with lots of use of the white paint splatter technique.

Also, I thought you might enjoy this other video drawing some kind of variation of a Demon skull in death metal style. Also in timelapse.

You might also want to check out How to draw a Death Metal Zombie Head for some further ideas in drawing in this horror style.

How To Make Money Drawing Sketch Cards

Making money with your art is an Artists dream and with sketch cards since 2017 I've been making money by drawing sketch cards for all sorts of different companies from Topps and Upperdeck to independent companies such as MNS Cards, RPK Cards, Viceroy Cards and Perna Studios to name a few.

I originally knew nothing of sketch cards and their existence prior to starting my first set which was a Walking Dead Evolution card set for Topps Cards and I didn't know that they inserted them into packs of regular trading cards as rare original sketch card items.

So above is one of the main ways to get into actual companies and do freelance sketch work for them and it's easier than you think. All you do is contact these companies through their social media pages or if you know other Artists that are doing cards, aks them to see if they'll give you the contact details.

I was lucky, another Artist referred me to Topps and then I found other work later on through other places that I networked with through Facebook groups mainly.

Here are just some examples of the cards I have done over the past few years.

Marvel Flair 2019 - Upperdeck

MNS Cards - Lon Chaney/ Art of Aragorn

Krampus Inked Nightmare 2019 - Attic Cards

Star Wars Rise of Skywalker 2019 - Topps Cards

Of course, the art of creating these sketch cards early on was difficult to get to a good quality particular in some of the Topps sets as you were reliant on drawing from specific reference photos and some times the paper stock wasn't very easy to use with markers or some art materials, but now I've mixed in coloured pencils and mixed media on my cards which seems to work out looking a lot better even though the scans really don't do the cards justice.

The best thing about working for other companies though is for every set amount of cards you have to draw for them you get some cards back called Artist Proofs which you can keep and sell at whatever price you want. This is often where you make back more money as you are selling an original one off sketch card were you could price it between £100 to £200 or even more depending on the demand for your art.

Other ways to make money drawing sketch cards are your own personal commissioned sketch cards, usually called PSC;s these can be made up of cards you have for this purpose which you commission on a contact basis through people that have seen and liked your work.

I've seen other Artists keep some Artist Proofs (AP's)back blank for this very purpose which makes sense as the customer can usually express what art they want on the cards.

One of the best tips I can give you about obtaining sketch card work is to keep active on social media, more often than not I've come across hidden gems of opportunities that wouldn't have happened had I not been a part of a facebook group or another Artists Instagram or Twitter page. Networking is key to getting these jobs.

The pay can fluctuate from as little as $3 per card to upwards of $5, $8 or $10 per card or more, but the more cards you are able to do potentially the more money you could make.

Drawing these cards won't make you rich, but it can be classed as one income stream you could add to many others that could benefit you in time and also it can open more doors for you as an Artist to gain commissions and more paid freelance art work.

Please, ask me anything in the comments about drawing sketch cards, I'd be happy to answer. Cheers!