Hellsing!

I've recently re-watched the fantastic anime Hellsing, and it gave me million of ideas. So I had to paint as many as possible. 

For those that don't know, Hellsing is a dark, bloody vampire series. The main character is a vampire, and he works for an organization called Hellsing that takes care of other vampires causing trouble. Basically. 

So, vampire theme! Since I think splashing blood is so much fun, I got really excited. Going to go through this properly, final pic is at the bottom of the post! 

I started by planning out what motives I wanted, I have a paper full of drawings, but I chose the ones that went best together. Then I chose my background colors. I wanted to have red in every design, but I didn't want any nail to have red polish, so most of them turned out grey. 

I mixed the blue myself, using the pale grey, a thin mint blue and a drop of navy blue. The white nail has a coat of a thin skin colored polish, but it doesn't show well. It's also on the grey pinky, you can see that it's a bit lighter than on the index finger. The ring finger has one coat of a silver polish. 

Here I've added another coat of skin colored polish on my middle finger, you can kind of see it now. In real life it's perfect! I also added a glittery silver polish on the silver nail.
My first design was on the thumb, the blue background being their blue uniforms, and the emblem (or whatever it's called) that's on their uniforms. I started by making a black, even cross almost in the center of the nail, a bit closer to the tip, so I could fit the upper part. Filled it in, waited for it to dry, and filled it in again with white, leaving a black line on the sides and for the top part. Then I added the black squares you can see  in the picture. 

I filled in the white squares with red, and the top part in yellow. I also wrote "HELLSING" in black over the yellow area, you can see that later. 

On the skin colored nail I put a vampire bite. This is super easy to do, you sponge on a circle of red polish for the bit area, add a dark red, almost burgundy circle in the middle, and then draw in some blood sippering from it. I made almost brown circles, did the dripping blood in a shade more red, and then added my beloved blood polish (that I'm holding) to give it a bit more pop. 

On my index finger I wanted a cross. There is a cross in the intro of the anime, picture below, and that's the one I wanted. I started by just making a black cross, as you can see. 

My ring finger got my best idea, the bird design. I made a lot of black V's, few on the sides and more in the middle. On the second picture below you can see how they've made a black space in the middle of the nail. 

And the finished nails!

Starting with my index finger; I filled in the cross with white, and then added thin, black stripes. Since I wanted red on all my nails, I painted blood pouring down on the cross, and dripping from the edges. 
Ring finger; In the black area made by the birds, I added white mixed with a tiny bit of black to make a really light grey, and made almost shapes. These are eyes. I put in black circles and then dotted on red to make the eyes look really evil and yummy. 
Pinky finger; On my pinky I wanted something simple and bloody, so I re-did the blood design I once did (but that one had lace). I started off the same as last time, I made a dark red by mixing crimson red and a light brown, and watered it down until it was very, very thin. Then I loaded my brush heavily and tapped it to make the paint splatter over my nail. I added more brown into the paint and went over it again to make shades. Then I took my bloody polish and dotted it in with my brush on the big drops to give it dimension.

I absolutely love this design. I usually fail horribly when added different motives, especially with different background, but these are kept together perfectly by the red additions in each design. 

What I thought of while making these as well, was the you can have each of these designs on its own! The emblem can go on the ring finger, and then you can have the rest of the nails black or blue. The cross, again on the ring finger, would look great if the other nails were just grey (or maybe silver or red, and then have that color behind the cross as well). The bite can be put on your ring finger, and then you can make the rest of the nails skin colored and just add blood dripping from the cuticle.
The birds and eyes would look awesome on the ring finger, with the rest of the nails in black. I don't think having this design on all your nails would look good. As for the splattered blood, I've done that before, and it looks great! 

So this is my tribute to a great anime, I loved making these and I'm loving wearing them. Hope you love them too!

Tialiq