# Metallic Ink vs Paint .... a shimmer effect question



## KashakuTatsu (Jul 17, 2010)

Lil bit of background: I am working on different techniques to enhance my dragon drawing. The main dragon I'm working with has a metallic blood red shimmer to her black scales. Up till now I've been working with using stippling, line weight variances, and hatching to create a 3D scale effect then using a scarlet lake pencil over carbon to get the blood red on black appearance. So far it's doing good for small scale work, but I want to work in a medium for larger pieces (like 16" and above). I have seen a few artists use ink/pencil combos with either acrylic ink or paint for their 8x11 and larger pieces. 

What is the most cost/time effective solution to get the blood red shimmer for the larger pieces (possibly using acrylic paint instead of pencil, that is yet to be seen)? So far in talking with different art stores I've gotten using embossing (very costly and time consuming), mixing red and gold paint (still kinda spendy), metallic acrylic paint, getting black and red metallic acrylic inks and blending, or putting red glitter paint into the acrylic paint.... 

Any use any of these techniques? I'm really interested in info on the metallic inks (may prove more versatile than paint since could use on the smaller ink projects). and yes am going for realism so the image having the shimmer effect will be a major plus.


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## sunandshadow (Jul 17, 2010)

You can get craft acrylic paint with red glitter already in it, $1 or $2 a bottle at Micheals.  I was really happy with what it looked like when I used it to make a blood red sun on a large painting.  You have to really glop it on, on top of an undercoat of a solid red, because the base of all sparkle paints is clear - has to be otherwise you can't see the sparkles because they get coated with the color.  The result has an impressive amount of visual depth but it might kill a piece of paper.  My current acrylic painting has a lot of shiny and metallic colors in it but not sparkles - I have a bottle of solid metallic red but I haven't had a use for that color yet.

I also have a gellyroll ballpoint pen that is an ok sparkly red, but it's not a deep red - most red inks are a lighter orangey red, and the sparkles in them are generally silver.  I got irritated with metallic pens when I realized it was impossible to scan those colors, but I wasn't trying


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