In my last Cult of Thorns Ritual Knife update, I discussed 90% of the paintjob. In this final update I’ll discuss the final step – blood spatter. Finished prop pictures included!

For reference, here’s where we left off in the last update. This is fully painted and weathered:

I then wanted to do the blood smears and spatter. You can buy blood acrylic paints that simulate the look, feel, and behavior of blood, but I didn’t have any, so I experimented with the cheap reds, oranges, browns, and blacks that I did have until I got something I was happy with:

Once I got to this point, I sent the picture above to some of my friends. The responses, including a “wtf is that”, overwhelmingly indicated that I reached the target color and consistency. 😂

I did clear up any confusion by taking a wide shot, just in case anyone would have gotten worried:

I applied the “blood” in three ways:

I started by applying some blood streaks to the front edge of the knife, as this should be the stabby part, and stabby parts of sacrificial knives should be bloody.

I then took some of the paint and thinned it out to create a blood-wash, which I applied over the front half of the knife to make sure the nooks and crannies got a reddish tint. But I kept the other half of the knife largely untouched so that there is a higher contrast, which makes the bloody half a bit more noticeable.

For the final step, I went back to the thicker paint. I loaded up a little bit at a time into the bristles of my brush (also shown above) and flicked the bristles while aiming for the front half of the knife to create genuine splatter.

I was super happy with the final result. It unsurprisingly took me a while, but in finishing this, I finally finished my first prop. You can enjoy the finished result below!

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