This year I fell in love
with ink painting.

I’ve painted with inks for a time, and moved them about with water,
but this year my heart really flipped over inks.

Years ago I began with a swatch book of the watercolors and inks I owned;
most of the inks are in little sample vials.
At that time I wanted to compare color, and to test for
water PROOF or water resistant qualities (much more on this later),
as my focus was on using them with watercolors.
I tested and mixed and played in what started as a neat book of squares,
coming back and dropping water in the center to see if the ink moved.
You see the dots above?  Most inks moved a lot!
I liked using a bound book better than flash cards
because it sat neatly on my shelf right next to finished sketchbooks;
though it does mean I can’t reshuffle the order of the colors!

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve painted more with inks,
and acquired many new bottles…  to test, I began dropping a lot of ink
in one corner of my journal then drawing it down with water after it dried.
I’m fascinated by how they move and had a life of their own —
even more than watercolors, which you can have some “control” over.

I haven’t figured out the whole light-fast thang, but I adore using them in my journals,
and of course, there it barely matters; journals are closed except when viewed!

All this lead me to find another way to test my inks… specifically for artists…
that is what I am going to be doing over the next few months, sharing my experiments with each ink I own, exploring how it will work for ink painting.
I will put all the inks I play with in depth on pages under my banner, above.

Tomorrow, first ink up:Robert Oster Jade!

I don’t know where this is going…
I just know I have to share my enthusiasm!

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