mellow

Splash art is one of the easiest ways to add energy, emotion, and movement to your digital illustrations 🎨💦

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through my process for creating dynamic splash art—from shaping the splashes, choosing the right brushes, to blending everything seamlessly into your artwork.

Whether you’re a beginner or an artist looking to experiment with new techniques, this step-by-step guide will help you break away from flat compositions and create pieces that feel alive and expressive.

Save this post for later, try it out on your next artwork, and don’t be afraid to let things get messy—sometimes the best art comes from controlled chaos ✨💥

I'll explain everything down here too in case you want something more specific:

1- Trace an image to better understand the bone structure and study the values you're going to use in black and white. For an even better understanding try to do some pencil sketches before trying to follow all the tutorial!

2- Start your drawing by suggesting the bone structure you just studied. I personally like to indicate how the eyebrow interacts with the outer corner of the eye and the bridge of the nose. Don't rush this step even if it seems useless because it's the most important, especially in the style of arcane where the planes of the face are emphasized a lot!

3- Try to copy from the reference the main features, the shape of the eye and the eyebrow. Try to be as accurate as you can (I know you can do it!!🤌)

4- Now draw the iris and DONT MAKE IT A CIRCLE!!

5- Also draw the eyelids, pay attention with how they interact with other harder surfaces because they're soft and wrap around the eye.

5.5- Refine everything with line art or just adjust the sketch to your liking.

6- Add base colors underneath your lines (if you work digitally) and a cell shadow (darken the color you used for the skin and make it A BIT mor red and saturated) under the eyebrow and on the eyelids. I suggest to do all the skin in one layer because we're gonna blend later!

7- Let's add some bouncing light in that shadow! Pick a lighter (just a bit! these are NOT your highlights!!) pinkish color and put it under the eyebrow (soft edge) and in the inner plane on the bridge of the nose (hard edge).

8- Add also a darker brown color as an eyeshadow on the upper and lower eyelid. Then you can darken it in some areas (mainly on the outer corner) giving the effect of smudged mascara. Notice how a lot of the edges here are really hard, don't just blend everything.

9- Do a gradient of oblique lines on the outer corner of the eyebrow. Here too they are all hard edges so just do brush strokes without blending!

10- Now draw those highlights on the skin! Use a pinkish color near the shadows and a more desaturated and lighter one for the true highlights. Here's your chance to really define those hard edges and blend the soft ones.

10.5- I noticed the line art near the lacrimal gland is a dark orange/red so do that!

11- Color the sclera with a light gray and shadow it as if it was a sphere (under the upper eyelid and near the outer corner).

12- Darken the top of the iris with a dark blue and lighten the bottom with 4 simmetrical brush strokes (the same color on the right and the left) then a lighter one right in the middle. Again, DON'T BLEND IT! Leave it as hard edges!

13- Add the iconic sparkles in the eye and YAYY WE'RE DONE!!

I hope you managed to follow through and enjoyed the whole process! Please let me see if you try it! 🫶

✨ btwwww I have open commissions + adoptables on Toyhouse! Link in bio! ✨

Everyone says NEVER TRACE!! THAT'S ART THEFT! Ok but we can do a little crime in the name of Learning.

Trace to learn, not to earn.

I like to take my own photos, but you can study whatever you want. Link back to original photos, and don't post copied artwork unless the artist is dead, cool with it, or both.

As always with learning, start every sketch with the intent to throw it away (trash for paper, quitting without saving for digital) This takes the pressure off and lets you make Bad Art, which is very important.

So let's make Bad Art of a Deer because I happen to have one handy

Start with a photo of your subject in a nice/neutral pose with all four feet visible. (so not like me)

Freehand copy it. Try not to stylize, focusing instead of matching proportions and pose. Don't get too detailed!

It's ok if your art looks terrible and has broken legs. I've drawn LOTS of deer so I have a leg up. Everyone's art sucks in their own eyes and here's where mine went wrong:

Either lasso-distort (recommended for beginners) or redraw a copy of your first sketch with your reference behind it (scaled to match the main body of your sketch)

Put the original and modified sketches together and compare the differences. Write it down if you want. This shows you where your eyes saw things the wrong size, so you can correct for that next time.

After learning about both deer and yourself, try freehand copying again.

Marvel at your newfound knowledge and skill!

but there's always room for improvement

You can stop here and move on to your real drawing, Or do another freehand-fix-compare cycle. I actually overcorrected my "draws heads too big" and veered into "heads too small."

Another note on tracing: Learning HOW to trace is more important than anything you could learn By tracing. Draw the Anatomy, not the outline. In real life, things don't have outlines, they have bones.

These are from the same shoot which is extra useful for consistency. The lines are minimal and follow where the animals joints are, and only important parts are drawn.

You won't know what Important Parts means right off the bat, which is where in-depth study comes in. You need to do learn the hard parts to do the easy parts right.

"Study the anatomy study the anatomy" but they never tell you HOW. It's not "read a book," It's more like flailing around wildly and crashing your browser from too many tabs.

This is going to be about How to Make a bones and muscle chart. Because even if your art sucks, you learn so much more by doing than by seeing.

References I gathered: X X X X X X X X

Get Set up. Get a photo, like above, but it doesn't have to be the same photo. And now... gather reference.

We'll start with bones. Search up "[animal] skeleton" and get photos or super scientific illustration. Add in things like "top view" to spice it up.

Next, search "[animal] skeleton sketchfab." This pulls up 3D models that you can rotate in your browser. Remember that these are art and the anatomy is only as good as the artist, so pick a good one.

Time for bone!

The spine is the most important, and in a lot of animals it will surprise you. Draw it in over your photo and then add spikes because skeletons are punk. These are not scientific and I didn't count them because their number doesn't matter to art. So you better be referencing from scientists and not me!

The rest of the bones and some notes. These are my notes to myself about things I want to remember. My personal discoveries in anatomy that made my art better. You can make the same notes but also make sure you have your own thoughts on there as well. that's how you help yourself the best. Be as detailed or vague as you want.

Same deal with muscle. Here are my personal notes to myself. Label stuff that is important to you. I actually grouped a bunch of muscles together based on what is visible from the outside. Muscles are way more complicated than this, but Baby's First Anatomy Chart gets to be simple.

This is good enough for me because I have intimate knowledge of the other muscles working under and over these ones. Feel free to add as many or as few muscles as you like. You chart your own course.

This is very VERY much not an anatomical chart. I'm sure there's nerds out there pulling their hair out looking at this. But listen, it works for art!

And you know the wildest part about this?

I don't need to look at it to use it. The act of making your own anatomy chart puts that knowledge in your brain. Like how you can make "cheat sheets" even for tests that don't allow them - the act of making the sheet helps you remember what you struggle with most.

And after all that complexity? Your simplification will be based on Real Knowledge and you'll put those random circles in the right spots.

Look at all this hard work you've done. Eventually this will be second nature to you.

I put together some photo packs and uploaded them to my gumroad. You can use them and this guide to study! So far there's only a Doe and a Fawn pack, but if I get sales I will put in the effort to do more for deer, horses, cats, birds, and anything else I can point my camera at.

Doe Pack