Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Sketchbook Pages: New Supplies

A week or so ago, I picked up a few inexpensive supplies, all items that were new to me and my sketchbooks. Needless to say, I jumped right in. I think this "try-out" page says it all:
Masking tape - a no-brainer, but I'd never picked any up before. Fun labels. Black Plaka, which needs to be watered down (as I did later). Orange India ink - awesome! I love the transparent and liquid consistency; I was dripping and blowing it all over the page. In all of these try-out pages, I used the built-in eye dropper to "paint" or drip the ink.
I loved the India ink so much I went back to Mixed Media (a great shop on James N) and picked up another two bottles: brown and violet.
Straight out of the bottle, these are both pretty dark. But I'll be able to dilute them with water for paler washes.
Now I'll just have to go back and get the red, blue and yellow bottles so that I can start mixing my own colours!

I have one more page to show, but it's a bit more layered and polished, using all of my new supplies, so there are quite a few photos. I thought I'd keep those for tomorrow.

Have you ever used India ink? Any tips? 

2 comments:

Melissa H. said...

I used to use India ink all the time when I was much, much younger.

I took a drawing class where one of the mediums used was pen and ink. We used a variety of nibs for drawing and shading our pencil sketches. I only ever used the black ink, but my mom used colored inks in a couple of her works.

We both had really nice results, with one exception: the sun will bleach and change the color of the ink after a while. My mom found this out when she hung a piece on a wall that got more sun than she expected.

Angie said...

It's great to see your new supplies! I just have white acrylic ink, for outlining in my watercolour / acrylic pieces.

Your india ink, especially the orange seem to have a wonderful vibrancy to them :)