Two Drops of Bloody Ketchup

Recently I entered a vampire artwork contest at ArtWanted.com with my old Vampiric Self-Portrait (a.k.a. Two Drops of Ketchup). I did it just for fun, never expecting to win anything, but to my big surprise it won the 2nd place! The prize is only 10 bucks (crisis, you know), but I'm still very happy, because it's the first time my artwork reaches such a high place in a contest.

So here it is, my "award-winning" self-portrait, made back in 1996. It's done with color pencils, ball-point pens, gouache and Indian ink on paper. The so-called "blood drops" (by the concept, they are just ketchup drops) were made by using a sort of "action painting" -- I dripped highly diluted red gouache from a distance high enough to cause natural splatters, then I slightly tilted the paper for a second to make the drops run down a bit, and let them dry that way. That's why they look so realistic. Of course, I had to post-process the drops with color pencils and ball-point pens to give them the necessary volume.

As for my face, I didn't have a camera back then, so I used a double mirror to draw myself from life. Very archaic method nowadays, but it works quite well, once you get a knack of it.