Ink Splatter Tutorial

Ink splatters are used to create graphic brushes for added effects such as the grunge effect, font effects and sumi-e brush painting. The most realistic and creative way to create ink splatter is with a bottle of ink and paper. Be sure to let the ink completely dry out before scanning your artwork into the computer or you could end up with smeared ink and a mess to clean up.

• 1

  Prepare your work area by covering with an old vinyl table cloth, plastic or newspaper. Create your ink splattering it on the paper with a straw. Experiment with different techniques and let your artwork completely dry.

• 2

  Scan your dried ink artwork at 300 DPI into your favorite graphic program such as Photoshop, Snagit or Fireworks.

• 3

  Adjust your ink splatter as need to make the any gray parts of the paper white. Zoom in on your ink splatter edges to adjust any gray around the edges to black by using a small brush tool and painting it black. Save your image as a JPG.

• 4

  Open your image in a vector graphic editor such as Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X.

• 5

  Create a trace of the ink splatter, adjusting the settings as needed. Delete the original ink splatter, leaving just the trace. Save your file.