Dry Brush.

So the scene called for the lead two characters to come across a blood trail outside a cave. When it came to the shot of the blood I wanted to have smeary, natural look to it and after thumb-nailing the scene I racked my brains on how to pull that effect off. My first thought would be by laying down the ink with something other then a brush. An object like a screw or the other end of the brush itself (which would have been messy to clean up afterwards but anyway). I had a couple of tries before hand but nothing really seemed to work. It was only a small shot but I wanted it to feel sinister and real. I can’t remember how I came round to the idea of using the ‘Dry Brush’ technique. Not really a style I’ve tried before when inking. I’ve always liked it in other peoples work when used well i.e. artist like Sean Phillips and so on. It maybe lost a little of it effect through being scanned but I was happy with the result and see in what other ways the dry brush technique can be used in my inking style in the future. I’ve got a couple of ideas lined up I want to try out. Will post any successful ones in the future and burn and cry over images that don’t.