*Note: I hit publish by accident, and wouldntyaknowit
no spelling errors so ask me if something doesn’t make sense!!!*

No time for watercolors and an abundance of
new inks led me in a new direction.
Some were samples… yummy to paint with!

It isn’t that watercolors take a lot of time, per se, but I tend toward middle of the night drawing these days and I have to pull water and pans out on the narrow table, and there is a balancing act of pans on my knee-top table.  Add three cats (Sammy sleeps in the other room) and one husband and that is a crowded bed waiting for a paint spill!

I’ve done ink washes
in past, but this time I did it with lots more inky colors.
I was gifted with $$$ for
inks, and there were some good sales that allowed my $$$ to stretch.  There is little
I love more than color.

I’ve been asked how I do this.

Eventually I will do a video demo but not until the
Carousel Horses (yes that is what I am working on these days, right) are completed!

When I start I have a line drawing in waterproof ink like the sample above.
I use fountain pens but any ink you can wash over is fine…
though eventually you will probably want to try a fountain pen.
Less to the landfill, and you can choose the colors!

Where you end up is the colors moving with a waterbrush, below.
I think you might be able to use Tombow or Ecoline markers for this,
but I haven’t tried that.  The ink has to move with water,
either with a waterbrush (I prefer) or a paintbrush + water.

I love Pentel Aquash waterbrushes, and buy them in the packs from Amazon.
They keep their points longer than others I’ve tried,
and the plastic screw mechanism doesn’t disintegrate quickly.
I use them for diluted ink washes, but LOVE that I don’t have to have an
open container of water in bed with me at night!

I pick my colors and begin drawing line of ink within the areas I want color to wash.
NOTE: I do the sky last!

I touch my waterbrush to the edge of the line, making sure that my brush is also sitting on the side I want to draw down.  You want to move fairly quickly; ink dries fast… I pull or draw down, and less ink pigment moves the farther I get (see below) so it is more intense around the linework.

You might want to practice.

Let each color dry unless you are okay with possible blending, shown below.

If you are very picky and precise about your color work,
(I sometimes want it just so)
do not add all the color at once as I did above,  but add each color then draw it out
with the waterbrush,
letting it dry between colors… In my fast sketches I am
okay with happy accidents.

I used a waterbrush filled with diluted waterproof grey on the buildings, but before I went over it with the grey I put in a few rusty soluble inks streaks: See what they did below!

I water-painted the greens together, then the golds/brown/grey building together.

After all that, I came back and lined the tops of the trees with blue and did the sky.
It picks up some of the trees and makes a lovely blended color…

Above I’ve done the same technique,
but I colored the river in waterproof grey with a waterbrush.

Below, this technique was used around the geranium center and drawn out lighter,
but for the rest I wet the background with the water and
dropped a bit of color in by touching my brush to my pen nib.

BTW, inks are harder to tame than watercolors!

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