The immense power of the newly released Krita 5.2 combined with Ramon’s new inkbrush sets has torn open a rift between our world and the spirit realm.
Mischievious and malicious spirits have escaped into the forum, and must be hunted down before they cause any real harm. Due to the inky nature of the incident, the only way to find them is by spraying ink around and looking for their forms in the resulting patterns. We need to catch them all, then send them back through the rift so we can seal the tear!
If we fail the consequences will be catastrophic…
Calling all Inkbusters!
Make an inkblot in real or digital ink, then search the created shapes and textures for ghosts, phantoms, wraiths and other such spirits.
You can paint in black and white or colour, real or digital. Ramon’s brushes are ideal for realistic ink style strokes and effects.
This is not a contest - It’s just for fun! The monthly art challenge is ongoing and also has a Halloween theme this month, so check that out too if you haven’t already.
Tips:
For the inkblot: Real ink should produce more organic results, so may work better for this. You can achieve interesting effects by wetting the paper first so the ink spreads out. You can manipulate it by tipping the page or blowing the wet ink. You can achieve similar results using diluted watercolour paint.
Paper designed for water media such as watercolour paper is less likely to buckle than drawing paper. You can create a Rorschach style blot by folding the paper and pressing the wet ink to create a mirror image.
I realise these materials may not be available to everyone. If those who can want to post spare blots for others to use that would be helpful. I might be able to contribute some myself.
The idea for this was inspired by a ‘character of the week’ contest we did on conceptart .org forum back in 2018. This is the sketch I did based on a real inkblot I made, which I scanned, warped and painted in Krita:
Last time I took part in such a funny pareidolia game, it was with scribbles instead of ink blots. There was a French youtuber who would share 1 scribble per week, same for everyone, and then the viewers had to draw what they saw in it, keeping some lines of the scribble. That was fun, and scribbles can be made “organically” inside Krita too, unlike ink blots.
Any tips to make really random “blots” inside Krita, except for scribbling with closed eyes and a random texture brush? I can’t do it on real paper because my scanner is dead at the moment, so maybe I’ll just wait and see if I can borrow the blots from someone else!
Or maybe I’ll do it and use a photo instead of a scan, if it’s just for the blots it doesn’t need to be top quality after all…
You can carefully pour orange paint onto the surface of a pool of black paint and then gently stir it with a Deform brush preset. It was scary so I won’t be doing it again. Ghosts In The Machine
I have plenty of paper and watercolours so am happy to provide random blots for people to use. I’m not sure exactly how they’re gonna turn out as I’ve never done it but I shall blot away and post the results if helpful.
Nice work everyone! - Some really interesting textures among these; I look forward to seeing what creations people come up with. That one I did before wasn’t difficult - it took just over an hour to reach that stage. I think the looseness works well with the ethereal nature of the subject.
I’m hesitant to say anything it impossible in Krita due to the number of brush engines and huge array of options. This kind of effect is very complex though due to the way the pigment behaves on the wet surface and just isn’t possible with what we have. Rebelle can emulate it to a degree, but it’s still limited against using real media because of how you can manipulate it physically.
You can emulate the look of watercolour brushes quite well though - I think Pesi’s brushes are pretty effective in that respect, and Ramon has some similar ones such as those in his Atelier bundle.
The closest I’ve come to watercolour behaviour myself would be the experiments I did last year:
There are many ways you can add randomness to brushes - rotation, scatter, size, ratio, animated tips, masked brush combinations etc. Then you can also do clever things with layers - building textures in stacks with different blending modes to create interesting interactions. You can create very organic looking textures, but not quite like these real fluid interactions.
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