The Swimming Pool Booger

We all know there are many types of boogers: some crusty, some slimy and even bloody chunky ones with both hard and soft parts. The simplest member of the booger family is what cartoonists call 'the swimming pool booger'. This is smooth, wet, blobby, loose and slightly transparent. You don't have to be swimming to make one but pools are definitely conducive to them. So are colds and bronchitis.

Anyway here are the steps I use to render one of these fine specimens.

It all starts with a nose:

I made Stimpy's right nostril slightly bigger to gleave room for the booger to have a frame.

I turn the opacity down on the nose so I can see what I'm drawing. I use a basic non-textured brush to draw (trace actually) a wobbly booger with a bulbous bottom to show some weight.

On a layer underneath the inked booger I fill the flat color. (The 'fill' layer)

Then I select the fill and create another layer called 'grad' for gradient. I use the gradient tool to make the top of the booger a slightly different hue and value than the bottom. It's a bit darker at the top.

I turn off the line layer (the one labelled 'booger'.) Now I just see the gradient.

I select the fill layer then move up above the gradient layer and create a folder called "sh" - for shading. In that folder I create a layer called 'mel' to brush some light color on some of the edges of the booger. Note that I don't completely enclose the booger with the color and that the strokes are thick and thin rather than one evenly weighted line. (I call this layer 'Mel' after Mel Crawford who uses real paint to do this technique on his cartoon illustrations.)

On another layer in the 'sh' folder I use a soft brush to draw on a highlight.

I turn the opacity of the nose back to 100% so I can see how it all looks together.

Now to give it some sense of viscosity, I turn the opacity down on the booger so that it is semi transparent.

Slimy, huh? Now I turn up the opacity on all Stimpy's layers to see how it hangs in context.

Oh and btw, I worked out a simpler method to render hairballs as you can see here.

If you'd like me to show how I render any other particular body parts or excrescences please let me know in the comments.