Alcohol Inks for the Very First Time

I was generously given some alcohol inks by a friend of mine and I can’t begin to tell you how exciting that was for me, it’s a medium that I’ve been wanting to try out for a long time and that I knew absolutely NOTHING about.   Naturally, I went to town without looking up any instructions or tutorials and just played with the inks.  This first image is my first attempt at messing with the inks.  You’ll notice that  there’s loads of pigment and the colors pooled together to create very dark spots on the image.  I suppose, depending on what you’re looking for, that may or may not be what you want.

I then decided to go onto the internet to search for some ideas and learnt that you can dilute alcohol inks with rubbing alcohol and you can also drop rubbing alcohol onto the paper after you’ve already applied the ink to it and it will react.  I hunted down an old dropper bottle, filled it up with rubbing alcohol and then played with less colors at a time.  I really am liking the light cloudy effect.  In this next image I used only blue and gold.

I think the best part so far about playing with these inks is just watching them react on the yupo paper and watching the inked paper react to more alcohol as you drop it onto the surface.  It’s as if the piece is alive…it almost is because it’s moving and transforming right in-front of your eyes.

I’ll definitely be giving this medium more time after I do a little bit more research on ways to use it and learn some more techniques.  As always, I’ll keep you posted on my progress and let you know any new techniques that I learn.

​© Ammara Cokar 2018