Splatter Painting Demo: A Quick Rasta

So today I decided to create something tangible and write a guide on some real painting, to get out of the habit of using computer paint software, like SAI and OpenCanvas.

I bought this sweet Bob Marley poster at Wal Mart today and decided to paint something Rasta themed :)

SplatterPaint Rasta Poster:
So I've had these big cardboard pieces intended for use as a canvas in my closet for a while now and haven't used any.
I'm partial to acrylic paints; I have a big Tupperware container full of them.

Now, I'd originally planned to write a review on different stroke techniques like taking a large brush and splitting the paint colors across the bristles, half by half, and create a piece like this, but I ended up making a big splatter art :)

Ok so I started off painting the mix shown above, blue and green on one brush, with big wide strokes, trying to make my own green. It ended up getting annoying and taking a little too much time so I dumped on some green and yellow, and red, and started painting the base colors for my poster.

From here, my mindset became, "Alright, let's thicken up this base layer with more paint, and give it some serious distortion.
I squirted the green, yellow, and red paint on in long lines and thick pools, and proceeded to spread the colors all around within their sections and just generally, as I've said, thickened up the base and added some subtle distortion by starting the splatters.

Now it was all a matter of adding different colors and splattering paint all over the place, but being careful not to just make a splattery, unidentifyable mess.
Squirt the paint on your fingertips and flick it onto the cardboard sporadically in short, controlled bursts; make NO pattern.
Splash in some black here and there for emphasis.

A little bit more here and there........aaaaaaaannnnndd.....DONE! STOP Splattering!
A HUUUGE part of splatter painting is knowing when to stop.
Don't just absentmindedly flick paint, more and more until your left with a gross mess; quit while you're ahead.

And it's totally up to the artist to know when to stop.
If it's any example, here's where I stopped:

It looks pretty simple and messy here.
I kinda rushed through it.
If I had to do anything different I'd not have smeared the yellow around as much. In the pictures you can see that it looks kind of ovular rather than having solid edges, and bear in mind that you don't want to have the edges looking too solid, but just not as ovular as I'd made mine.