And here's one! This is from a tutorial I made up for the wonderful Plush You book, put out by super-gal Kristen Rask of Schmancy fame. It talks about how to apply blood to your toys and other bodily fluids...
Dimensional paint is a great product that is used for a variety of craft purposes. Not to be confused with the ever fun puff paint, it’s a thick acrylic paint that does not lose “body” or its three-dimensionality when it dries. If you ever painted using impasto and been disappointed when it dries at how much texture is lost, dimensional paint will make you very happy.
Dimensional paint can be found in most craft stores, or in the craft aisles of major stores. There’s quite a few different manufacturers producing it and it comes in shiny, glitter and pearl. I personally use shiny, it helps make the blood look more real and fresh!
Different manufacturers produce dimensional paint in different consistencies. I’ve had problems with some that is very thick and tends to come out of the bottle’s nozzle in a very thin wriggly line and also runny stuff that comes out too freely from the bottle and makes for very fat shapeless runnels of blood. Following the Goldilocks rule, paint that’s neither too thick or too runny is just right. Paint is quite cheap, so it can be worth sampling a few different types and finding what works for you.
The bottles of paint are usually around 1 fl. Oz in size and should come with a fine nozzle and a cap. It’s important to cap the bottle after use as it dries easily. You need to prepare the bottle before use, whether it’s a bottle you’ve used before or a new one. A phenomenon I like to call ‘Dimensional Paint Flatulence” can occur if you don’t shake the bottle’s content towards the tip. You don’t shake it like a cocktail, more like a couple of good downward motions and you should feel the paint settle in the top of the bottle. Otherwise air bubbles in the bottle will interrupt the flow of paint when you apply it. You apply the paint by squeezing the bottle and touching the paint to the fabric like you would using an icing bag on a cake. If there are air bubbles you’ll get a case of DPF, and instead of a nice fluid line of paint you get a small explosion of air and fine bits of paint splattered all over your surface. I haven’t been able to find a way to get paint, wet or dry, off fabric, so it pays to be careful. A good rule of thumb, every time you go to apply paint, is to try it out on a piece of paper first
Applying the paint
Step 1: Here we have a poor little bunny whose throats been cut. To give him a bit of dimensional paint goriness I usually start with a straight line of paint along the cut site. Don’t be too picky about this, as you can see, dimensional paint tends to come out in blobby lines, rather than nice smooth neat ones.
Starting a droplet
Step 2: I create the illusion of blood on my work by creating a series of running drops from wherever I’ve faked a cut on the piece. I start a little below the line of paint I created in Step 1 and start by creating a blob of paint. If you just squeeze a bit of paint out and touch it to the fabric you’ll create a little pointy blob that looks a little like a chocolate drop (see fig ). If you create one of these and hold the bottle there, not breaking contact with the paint and keep increasing the pressure you’ll keep adding more paint to our otherwise pointy blob and it will swell out to a nice round shape. This is one of the main precepts of my technique. It makes whatever you’re creating, blood, drool whatever, look like gravity is at work and fluids are pooling at the end of the drip. In other words, it looks more real. Now without breaking contact, move away from the blob and draw your paint up until it rejoins the line you created before. You have created your first drip.
Step 3: Essentially all you need to do now is create a series of blobs and lines back to the cut line you created in Step 1. I usually curve my lines back to the top as it makes it look more real to me. I will usually start with a blob, then move up in a line to the top and then create another line from the cut site and move down to a blob. I tend to apply the blood drips in one continual motion, not stopping to do each one individually, but I don’t think it will matter if you do them separately.
Step 4: Finished! Your blood is now applied and can be set aside to dry. It cannot be touched, usually for about eight hours , but as I live in the tropics it might dry differently in different climates. Do not be tempted to touch it until it dries, it ruins the shine of your blood and can blot your paint all over your fabric. So this means you need to leave your piece somewhere away from pets, children and your own sleeves sometimes to dry.
Now on to other bodily fluids
The same principal can be used to make other bodily fluids. If you’ve always wanted to make plush that’s drooling with boredom, nauseous and vomiting, or likes to pick its nose then you can do all of this with dimensional paint. Reverting back to your inner 5 year old has never been so visceral!
Drool
Drool is basically one blob and a very thin line of paint back to the corner or the mouth.
Vomit
Vomit can be harder, I personally find the look of big areas of dimensional paint unappealing so it’s more like creating a thin stream of bile. You can wiggle your line down from the mouth of your creature, so as to indicate the journey this unpleasantness has taken down the front of the creature. A small tasteful splash says so much more than Vomit-a-palooza… Add bits of carrot at your discretion.
Snot
Much like the splash in the vomit picture, anything lime green, blob-like and near a creature’s nose will read as snot. It you want to go overboard (like I do) you can actually apply two different colours of green together for extra gross out-ness. Essentially making a splash is much like blood drips, except now the blobs and lines meet in the centre of the splash shape, rather than follow a cut line. To make good snot, try and make more free form splash shapes, it looks more natural.
Tip: if you find this difficult doing it freehand, draw your shapes on a piece of paper and practice by tracing over them
Tears
The most benign is left for last. To create a rueful toy, place small blobs near the toys eyes and finish off the blobs with a short line. If you pull the bottle away from the end of the tear quite quickly it will make the line taper off nicely like a real tear shape.
Toy Design tips
Sometimes it’s hard to know whether any of these techniques would be ‘too much’ for the design of your toy, or even to work out where to place your blood or other bodily fluid. You can actually apply your paint to a very smooth plastic surface, like an ice cream container lid, and peel them off when they dry. You can then try out the shapes on your toy without permanently altering it. You can move your paint around until you come up with something that looks good, then apply the actual paint in the same way to the toy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment