Four on the go

 

I'm doing second versions of a few of my postcard sized watercolour and ink pen paintings. 

As you can see from the photo above I have been progressing the early stages of the four watercolours together. This gives me opportunity to lay down the similar underpainting coats of the watercolours. This of course is done after each is sketched onto the 300gsm watercolour paper; and in most cases I have gone over the sketch with a fine cool grey or sepia ink pen - see below. All paintings are based on photos I have taken on our visits to Scotland; and where I have used an app to remove the background.

A couple more process steps are shown in the flooring images.

I will get back to these four paintings next week; but at that point I will work each of them individually I think.

Nine test pieces

As a few folk would be aware I have been experimenting with alcohol and acrylic inks to see how they might work together and on different surfaces (papers).

In this blog post I share the outcome of those experiments including the opening image that I have called - Burnt bushes - silhouette after dusk: translucent yupo 'paper'; archival ink and permanent marker sketch; acrylic ink applied over with balsa wood implement (see end of blog); and alcohol over that - again applied with balsa wood.

Moonscape - white yupo paper; alcohol inks dropped directly onto paper; ink lines and acrylic moon added when dry.

Moody Moon - translucent yupo paper; archival ink sketch; acrylic moon; and alcohol ink painted over.

Moody evening - white yupo paper: 2-3 layers of alcohol ink applied with 10mm flat brush.

Fishing poles - dark dawn - 300gsm watercolour paper: archival ink sketch; acrylic ink applied with brush; alcohol ink overlay; acrylic ink touch up; and posca pen sun.

Fishing huts - through mist and grass - white yupo paper: acrylic painting of huts, sky and foreground; alcohol ink overlay; acrylic ink overlay; grass drawn through wet acrylic ink with pencil.

Dandelion shadows -translucent yupo paper: rough archival ink sketch; and alcohol ink applied with balsa wood implement.

Silver moon in winter landscape - translucent yupo paper: archival ink sketch; acrylic ink overlay applied with wide brush; alcohol ink applied with wide brush; posca pen moon and stars.

Moon in dark starry sky - translucent yupo paper: alcohol ink base applied with wide brush; acrylic ink moon; second coat of alcohol ink; posca pen moon and stars.

Balsa wood implement - about 8-9cm wide. Fiona used this when doing huge calligraphic letters. She suggested I give it a go. I think it will become one of my things.

Quite a lot of lessons learnt. I have written notes on each piece. I will now think about which technique and sequence and paper I will adopt.

More ink experimentation

 

I'm still testing how the alcohol and acrylic inks handle the different 'paper' surfaces; and I'm learning a lot about what can be layered on top of what!!!! Above - 3 layers on watercolour paper - acrylic ink, alcohol ink and acrylic ink.

A few photos showing the testing process.

Alcohol ink over permanent pen and then an acrylic moon and more ink over the whole.

Acrylic ink does not go over alcohol ink - ha ha.

Alcohol ink and acrylic moon.

Left image - ink sanded and acrylic ink adhered; and right image another coat of alcohol ink over acrylic on the sunrise scene to deepen the tone.

Another coat of acrylic ink resulted in a slight blurring of the underlay.

A few lessons learnt include: ink on 300gsm watercolour paper works well and both ink and acrylic can be layered on top of each other because of the porous and textured nature of the paper - however the colours can have a dull appearance; if you put ink on the yupo paper first the acrylic ink won't adhere - though I worked out if you give it a light sand it will adhere; and you need to clean yupo paper with clear alcohol to remove any grease from finger prints to encourage full coverage.

Experimenting with ink

 

I have asked Megan to work with me to test a new 'watercolour' technique. I want to see if I can do pieces where you build up layers using permanent inks - maybe even starting with main image on the bottom layer.

The above image shows where we got to experimenting with acrylic ink over permanent ink pens and a touch of salt.

I had talked to Fiona about wanting to test this approach and she immediately said, "I have lots of inks from my calligraphy days so why don't you try those." Fiona has both alcohol and acrylic based inks. The first thing Megan got me to do was to test the colours and different types of ink on 300gsm watercolour paper - see below.

The alcohol based inks did not work well on the watercolour paper - but we will give Yupo paper a try.

I wanted to test the acrylic inks on a cottage dusk image - the opening image; and one of the cove fishing nets drying poles. 

See process-process images below - including paper drying under a heat lamp. I will keep adding layers of ink to the last piece to see if I can build it up to get a rich colour and layered piece.

I think I'm going to have a lot of fun playing with this new medium.