Thursday, June 20, 2013

Reader Questions

Reader Sandra asks if Bombay acrylic inks will yield the same results in wabi-sabi pieces as the dye re-inkers I use in the book. Understandably, she wants to use the materials she already has. I haven't yet used Bombay acrylic inks, though they sound intriguing. I do have Daler-Rowney acrylic inks so I tried a little experiment.



I used a pre-gessoed canvas board to try out the experiment. The lighter side of this board, on the left, shows Red Pepper Adirondack Dye Reinker mixed with acrylic glaze medium. The larger section on the right shows Scarlet Daler-Rowney Acrylic Ink mixed with glaze medium. I sponged both areas with a paper towel.

It seems that the re-inker is more transparent. I also noticed that it stayed wet a little longer, so that I could alter the surface of the paint more. It may be that when using the acrylic inks, water would be a better choice than the glaze medium. This would likely give a more watercolor effect to the piece. Sandra says she is used to using watercolors, so she might like this effect a lot.

I love the re-inkers, but if you have other materials, go ahead and try them! It's all about experimenting, and I'm sure you can produce excellent work with re-inkers, acrylic inks, acrylic paint, watercolors, and more. I don't  think the effects of all of these will be exactly the same, but they should all work well.

Sandra, I suggest that you could get one or two re-inkers in similar colors to your acrylic inks and do some experiments. I'd love to see the results!

Sandra also asked about airbrush inks. Again, I haven't tried these. I see online that Golden airbrush inks come in opaque and transparent colors. I imagine that the transparent colors would work most like the re-inkers  used in my book. I also see that Golden makes a special mediums to go with these inks, so those might work similarly to the glaze medium I use.

By all means, dear readers, try out the wabi-sabi process and aesthetic with supplies you have and see how you like the results. You can always send me an email through my website and I'll reply back giving you an email address where you can send your photo. With your permission, I'll post your images on this blog so that we can all enjoy them and learn about the products and processes you used.

Anyone have experience with using acrylic and/or airbrush inks that you'd like to share?

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