Yesterday evening was amazingly exciting for me on many levels. I’d enrolled in a class featuring an introduction to Alcohol Inks. The class was about 10 minutes from our home and involved a delightful country ride to another little town, North Lake.
We convened in a studio where arts and crafts classes are held around the year—many different venues and a variety of mediums. A wonderful break-through for me. as Joe and I do not travel far these days, and this comprises a very pleasant outing. Right across the road from the art studio is the North Lake Library, a smallish and user-friendly place for Joe to hang out while I am sloshing paint around.
I have used India ink a lot, and I have occasionally sprayed paintings with alcohol. But the Alcohol Ink is a whole new thing for me. The intense high color saturation creates a cartoonish effect, and when these colors blend the result is drop dead gorgeous.
A total of 15 women (GIRLS—women like me who love to play will always be “GIRLS”) attended the workshop. Each of us produced 3 works of art, matted and r hopefully ready to mount in an 8″ x 10″ frame.*
Every single rendering was unique. There were no reproductions, copies, or clones because the outcome is almost completely in the hands of the paint on the slick surface of Yupo. The artist attempts to direct the paint by blowing on it through a straw. But control is impossible, and therein lies the charm and wonder. I am eager to experiment with this new-to-me medium, possibly using it in tandem with watercolor and gouache on Yupo.
But the absolute highlight of the Too-Much-Fun evening was meeting kindred, new-to-me art friends, “girls” who refuse to get old, so long as there are so many creative things to do while we are here on earth. We’ll never exhaust all the options, but oh what fun to try! 🙂
Margaret L. Been — May 25th, 2017
*To assure permanence, the Alcohol Ink paintings can be sprayed with a fixative, just as I spray watercolor and gouache paintings which have been done on Yupo. The ink will not be activated by water, as watercolors would, but a spritz of alcohol could cause the colors to run.
So this morning, I sprayed my 3 paintings and you may notice that only 2 are pictured above. The 3rd, my favorite of the trio, happened to be positioned too close to the fixative which apparently contains some alcohol. Consequently some magenta flowers, which resembled foxgloves, blended into a magenta river over the top 2/3rds of the piece. The “foxgloves” are no longer suitable for framing.
Lesson learned: If ink renderings are going to be framed behind glass, with mats or spacers between the glass and the painting, why bother to use a fixative? No one is apt to remove paintings from their frames and bombard them with alcohol.
Meanwhile, here is what happened to my foxgloves:
Leave a comment