Paint Sketching Something From A Nightmare Dream

 As the title of the video suggests I do forget to make simple and quick videos or posts like this that break down a process of paint sketching.

So here is a quick video that breaks down how I achieved this simple paint sketch based on a nightmare I had about weird Lovecraftian creatures, I think the Purple of the design really made it vivid in my minds eye.

It's a very short video and hopefully it shows and inspires you to create something similar with whatever you'd like to have a go at painting.

Paint Sketching Something From My Nightmare

Zombie Flesh Eaters Horror Ink Artwork Commissions

Here are a couple of Zombie Flesh Eaters ink drawing commissions I did in 2020. I really love the old Italian horror movies as I grew up in that era of the 80's when these films came out and most of them were banned and classed as video nasties.

I'll be doing more horror homage artworks this year.

 

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.