Playing with Alcohol Ink
My local art group got together last week and did some experimentation with alcohol ink. If you haven’t tried alcohol ink before, it is a bit different than standard ink. Alcohol inks are more fluid and are dye based. Alcohol inks dry faster and are reworkable by adding more alcohol after drying. Alcohol inks can be used on non-permeable surfaces such as plastic, resin, glass or ceramic.
Here we are just getting started.
I had decided to use the alcohol ink on packing tape which ends up partially transparent and can be added to other artwork making layers. I started with the tape on freezer paper but then realized the tape wasn’t coming off the paper as I expected. I switched to parchment paper halfway through and that worked better. The photo is of the tape on freezer paper before I pulled it off. I am planning on using these on some of my book pages on the book that I recently started.
Here is Sally trying out alcohol ink on Kraftex (a man made fabric type material). The inks didn’t really work all that well on fabric or Kraftex as it was a very porous surface. You can definitely color the fabric but it really ends up with a very blobby look.
Here are more of Sally’s creations. The ones at the right and bottom are on photo paper. The photo paper works much better as it is non-porous. The chemicals in the photo paper also react with the ink and can cause some unusual and unexpected results.
Paula was trying applying plastic wrap and bubble wrap to the ink after it’s applied to photo paper. It takes much longer to dry with the plastic wrap and really needs more air or it doesn’t dry properly.
Next up, Paula tried adding sticks and salt to the photo paper first and then adding the inks afterwards. The salt has not been removed yet as these were still a bit wet.
I only got one photo of Louise’s pieces. Here she used a base of photo paper and then the bottom half is alcohol ink with some strings of plastic left to dry. Then the stamped motifs were added afterwards.
There are many ways that you can use the alcohol ink but it works best on shiny surfaces such as yupo paper, photo paper or tape. We had fun with our experiments. I will show you my tape on book pages once I get that far.