PiCKLEBERRYPOP

I want to talk to you about paint smears and spatters.  So many times I’ve wondered… why did this scrapper shadow the paint spatter? It just looks wrong. Spatters, splatters, splotches, smears, etc… they don’t have shadows on a for realz paper layout when you spatter them on the page (unless you’re using really, really thick paint for some reason… or maybe gesso).

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Here’s a layout I did a while ago that I’ve added some paint spatters to:

​and a closer look at some of the paint:

Do you see how the paint smear on the doodle sort of shows thru the doodle? The pink on pink is a little hard to see so I’ve made the background paper blue for a hot minute:

You can see a little better how the paint picks up what’s behind it – ie, the color and texture. That’s because I’ve changed the blend mode of the paint spatters & smears to multiply so that it appears that the background paper has soaked up the paint. If I shadowed the paint instead…

​NOPE. Just no, y’all. Stop it, lol. Even with a smaller shadow it still doesn’t look quite right. So instead of shadowing your paint, change the blend mode. You can use this method to make it look like it’s soaked in to the paper (it’s not just a good method for text!)

Here it is with multiply blend mode again:

And here it is with linear burn blend mode:

​See how it picked up bits of the paper underneath?  It’s a much more natural look.  So stop shadowing that paint folks!  It makes no sense!  lol!