Ink - Have you ever done a painting on ink?

In Japan I took lessons and I still use the Japanese brush when I paint. It is so delicate and I am/was way to heave handed to be any good.

Japanese Ink Painting - Sumi-e

Joanne - that's nice!

I want to do something more like a oil, acrylic or watercolor paintings on color ink. I really don't know how to work with ink other than pointillism or flat colors but I want to use the ink as if it were a pigment.

I have done some work in all ink before and actually find it a lot of fun. I always treated the inks as watercolors. They mix similarly and I used water to dilute them. To me they always acted like watercolors, but they do not fade as fast.

Welcome to A2k Aldistar. We are always glad to have another artist among us.

Alistar - Welcome to A2K and thank you very much, that's really helpful information.

I want to try something different and as few bottles of ink came into my life while working on a new piece, I said why not try!

I am eager to see what will come out as final results.

I've used ink like a watercolor. Same affect. Gotta work fast, as I recall. It dries quickly.

eoe - are you satisfy with the final results of your ink work?

How fast will you say?

Do the colors look as strong as when you just drop ink on paper?

Do you have or need to apply any protective coat to the work once you are done?

and

Will the ink react, once dry, to fresh application as watercolor do?

Good questions, Rava...I'm hesitant to work with ink because I have the impression that it's very unforgiving. I love acrylic in part because it is so forgiving. I can work a painting until it works. I guess, however, that I should be more experimental. I do suspect that ink might be a great way to put certain kinds of final touches on oil, water or acrylic works. BUT oh how I would fear to do it wrong and spoil the painting!!!!.

Ink is extremely unforgiving. Once it's down, it's down. It depends on how much water you add, of course, to determine the colors' strength and saturation. I always worked with some water. You can apply shadow effects but, trying to build layers only results in muddiness so anticipate one layer only, maybe two for your darkest darks. It's been over twenty years since I've worked with inks so, all I can really advise is playing around with it, your color concentration and whatever paper/board you intend to work with. That's one thing I learned in art school that always stuck with me. Sample your medium and learn it's personality before committing to a final piece. Same as in real life, huh? :wink:

I did some ink drawings in a class some years ago that I saved because I liked the results... but the paper, which I remember as being good paper but on the thin side, waved over time, kind of pooching from the drawing. I suppose then, that I should have used a thick paper. Absorbency matters, ask the expert at an art store, or maybe someone here can suggest the right thickness, absorbency, and smoothness, given whether you use brush or stylus... or rapidograph..

I always worked with brushes and an illustration board. Real smooth. Wow. Is that a hotpress board or a coldpress? It's amazing. There was a time when my little world revolved around such things, hotpress board vs. a coldpress but, not anymore. I don't remember which is which. The computer took me out of that world completely.

And as a slight aside, I once tried to replicate the look of a marker rendered blueprint from the back - which I always liked... by xeroxing landscape plans onto Very Good Arches paper, to paint over with layers showing through, and gave up, as the paper absorbed my paint like crazy. SucccccccKKKK. And I had split the cost of a lot of sheets with another artist, sigh. Clearly the wrong type of Arches, or I handled it incorrectly.

Also, before I ever took an art class, I tried to copy an ink drawing out of the LA Times Home section, whatever the magazine was called back in the seventies. I figure it took me a couple of hundred hours... it was a complex line drawing of a bunch of vegetables, and covered two magazine pages. I used - what paper I can't remember - and one of those old pen point holders and fine points, and kept having to wipe paper "hairs" off between each effort to draw. I was pretty proud when I was done. Too bad it was copying someone else, I now realize that is at the least tacky, if not illegal, but it was certainly a hand-eye coordination lesson for me.

, I'm got a watercolor pad to try a few things before I start anything serious and I'm planing on using brushes, I am good with ink, when it comes to black and white pointillism, technical drawings and graphics.

I will try it until I get something, either a headache or an acceptable piece. I want to see what I can do and how far I can go with it.

Go to it!

I often use ink in combination with watercolors. India ink, unlike watercolors, is permenant. It will also flake off of a paper if you use it to thickly so take care. I also frequently use inks in my drawings, but they are spotted throughout the mixed media - not the basis of an entire work.

Depending on your desired effect, you might want to use watercolor or gouache watercolor instead of inks.

On the plus side with inks - they have a nice strongly saturated color and the texture is different than watercolor.


- btw, I knew an artist who worked with Dr. Marten fabric dye on canvas - which looked very beautiful but was, unfortunately, not lightfast.

Thanks, PS. Great information and suggestions.

using ink on bare canvas might be interesting - though expensive

I don't think the archival quality of all inks is good - so it is worth checking if you are selling.

I used ink a lot way back and flooding colours into each other wet can be absolutley wonderful

don't let it dry on your brushes though as it will ruin them been there done that!

Thank you for all the information.

I will be using J. Herbin Ink, I like it, I have used it on some of my work but never as the only media and will be working on a Clairefontaine Watercolor Pad, the paper is of a very good quality.

I will start testing this week, I will keep you all inform of my progress - hopefully good!

Ink drys a little faster than watercolor, but they are more 'colorfast' in that it is hard to push the color across the page without leaving a visible line where the color has set and where it is still wet. If you are not very careful you will end up with blotches and watermarks instead of a smooth transition of color.

The good thing about ink is that it will usually dry as pure as it is when first laid down on the paper. It does, of course depend upon the quality of the ink and the paper you use. Some colors are also more prone to fading faster than others, like reds and yellows.

I have never really heard of any treatment or overcoat being needed for inks.

Once the ink is dry that's it, it is not going anywhere. When you apply a second coat over the top you won't reactivate the dry ink you will just be adding another layer. Although if you make a mistake in ink it may be possible to correct. Take a Q-tip or any cotton swab and dip it in bleach and rub it over the mistake like you would with an eraser. This may not work on every mistake but it really helps on some of the smaller ones.

Be careful, if you brush on blue over yellow you will get green, but the other way around you will probably get black. I recommend taking some cheaper one or two ply watercolor paper and experimenting with mixing the colors before painting and mixing them on the paper just to see what will work and what won't. It is really easy to muddy up the colors with ink because they have their own set of colorwheel rules.


Thanks for the welcomes everybody, but I have posted here for quite awhile now!