Art Practice with Inks and Watercolor Paints

   We woke up to rain this morning-feels like a cold spring rain. Timing is bad though as we had help driving up to work with Larry on the dock and could finally get all of those Christmas goodies to them. Oh well such is life.

  For a couple days I have been playing with watercolor inks and paints.  The blackberry ink was interesting-ended up with three different colors-thought that was crazy at first, but the ink book arrived and it noted that there will be surprises with botanical inks. So I am just going with it and will have fun making and using these inks. 

   So far the black walnut ink is my favorite, I love the color and seems more stable too opposed to the berry ink. When using the black walnut for dye you don't need to use a mordant so that is probably why the ink is nicer too.

  The section to the right in this practice piece below, is mostly watercolor paint with black walnut ink-inspired by a page from the book I am working with.  

  To the left the flowers are with the blackberry ink. The blue flower on the right was the first one and I used a dip pen. The flower to the left I used a watercolor brush and got a little too much of the ink, as you can see how wet it is on the page

After the flower on the left dried I got this deep purple color

    The stems and leaves are black walnut ink with Winsor Newton green watercolor ink.

   The centers of the two flowers are black walnut ink

a closer look

  The next day I decided to make one more flower and see what color I would get this time haha   I used a glass dip pen for this one, also when I opened up the jar of blackberry ink it had a little film on top-I had forgotten to add the whole clove and wintergreen essential oil as a preservative.

    This is another color for the flower petals not sure if the wintergreen and clove added to the color change or the use of the glass pen made the difference.

  I am liking all three colors-it's just a surprise after they dry.

     Interesting that they were so different.

  I started reading a bit in the Ink book, It is a beautiful book , thick pages, but the type on the pages is very small so a little difficult for me to read. Not sure why they would do that. 

  I was a bit disappointed that there were not more recipes. The turmeric ink for a pretty yellow was made as an alcohol ink which I don't want to do-so will search for a water base recipe instead. There was also a recipe for a gorgeous blue from copper but I don't want to use any toxic chemicals for these inks. The book did have a good basic recipe and discussed different materials to use. Was very thorough for beginners setting up to make ink or dye as well. I have done allot of dyeing with natural materials in the past along with allot of eco dye experience as well-so may have been expecting more for making ink.

     Making ink is much simpler for sure.

   This is a beautiful and well written book. I am learning allot of little things and I am  enjoying the author, but I am glad I didn't pay full price for this book. If you have access to a library I would suggest reading it that way first.

 Happy Mid-Week

UPDATE:  browsing online I found an awesome site-30 days of making botanical inks here  She has 30 recipes for different botanicals and she was inspired by the Ink book I was referring to above. She uses the inks to make abstract art  I should ask her if she has a way to set the color in her paintings.

  When I can't sleep-I read-so I started really reading the Make Ink book tonight-and it's really written very well-like the author is talking to you He gives you the basics to just go out and make ink with a basic recipe-and then you adapt for your needs.