Splatter

Our snowfall last week was a heavy, wet snow. Not good for anyone who had to shovel, but as it dripped from the trees, it left beautiful splatter patterns in the blanket of wet snow below.

Making splatters can be a fun and easy way to tackle a blank page. You don’t need anything fancy to create a splatter design and there are a few simple ways to do it. The easiest one is with paint, a brush and a piece of paper. It works with both watercolors and acrylics so choose whichever you prefer (you’ll need to add a little water to the acrylics to get a nice, fluid splatter).

And you’ll want to make sure you put some paper or plastic beneath your sketchbook or journal to protect your workspace (this technique can get a little messy).

Load up your brush with paint.

Then tap or flick the brush above the paper.

Play around with how much water you add to your paint, the distance between the brush and the paper and how hard you tap the brush because each of these will change the effect of the splatter pattern. You can use one color or mix a bunch of colorful dots across your page – keep trying different variations to see what you like the best.

Another easy way to make splatters is with spray inks. You can purchase pre-mixed paints from most art or craft stores in a variety of colors and styles (plain colors, metallic, neon, etc.).

Or you can mix your own with tubes of either watercolor or acrylic paints (I’ve used the cheap Artist Loft tubes from Michael’s), water and a small spray bottle. I’ve seen several different recipes for the spray inks online so look around and find the one you like best. Note – if you mix your own, try a few different bottles because I’ve discovered that they all have a different spray (some are thick and gloppy and some are a fine mist).

Once you have your ink, prepare your workspace the same way you did for the brush splatters then spray your page with the ink. Again, you’ll need to play around with how far away you hold the bottle when you spray and mixing colors. But just keep spraying and have fun with it!

If you want to add another visual element to the page, place a stencil or mask on the page before you spray the ink or paint. This is a great technique if you want to create a card for a friend or just add a space to journal on your page.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a “fancy” stencil, anything will work. Raid your desk drawer or kitchen and look for anything with holes in it that you don’t mind spraying with paint or ink (this is one of my favorite things to do and something I’ll talk about a lot).

You can even make your own by cutting out shapes from a piece of paper or cardstock. For this piece below, I simply cut out a circle from white cardstock and stuck it in place with a piece of painters tape just so that it wouldn’t move while I sprayed gold ink onto the paper.

Then I handwrote the word “joy” into the circle with pencil and painted over it in gold acrylic paint.

Have fun making a colorful “mess” and remember I’d love to see your creations so be sure to tag them with #TheFoundArtWalk if you post them to Instagram!