January 12th, 2011

I got to sleep in today!  I didn’t have to go to work and Jenny let me have as much time as I wanted to get up. That was nice.  I got up at 10 o’clock and posted my previous days creative thing.  We took it easy for most of the day and got grandma to watch June in the evening.

Jenny and I saw Black Swan this evening.  It was a pretty good film.  To be critical, I did find the device of Natalie Portman’s character seeing her face appear on Mila Kunis’s character multiple times in the film a bit tiring. Nevertheless, the film was still very inspiring, especially the camera work.  There were very few long shots in the film.  The camera was always handheld and moving and right in on Natalie Portman’s face.  It was visceral filmmaking mirroring the visceral objectives and passions of the main character, I think.

I drove home from the film with my creative thing on the brain.  I wasn’t sure if I should do another ink project but suddenly this idea came to mind and I had to follow through.

I started by finding a good reference image on the internet and lightly drawing it onto the paper.

Next, I had to test out some splatter techniques on another sheet of paper to figure out how I was going to go about inking it.  I tested out different techniques using a dropper and various brushes but I ultimately ended up sticking with the dropper.  The reason was that I found a few diferent ways to use the dropper that made it the most versatile tool.

If I dripped ink from very close to the page a small circle would appear.  Dripped from higher produced larger circles.  I could suck up excess ink with the dropper as well.  Finally, the clincher, if I pressed the dropper straight down with firm pressure into a fresh drop of ink and slowly squeezed the bulb a small explosion of ink would occur giving it the splatter I was looking for.  Using this method allowed me to drip ink accurately over the drawing but also add a more controlled splatter by using the little explosion technique I just described. I also used a straw to blow a drop of ink into the shape of the arms.

I’m pretty happy with the final product.  It actually turned out pretty close to how I envisioned it.  I was going to add a spotlight effect by dripping more ink around the corners but decided to quit while I was ahead.