Playing With India Ink in a Brush Pen-Sketches

April 27, 2020 -Mama's 3rd birthday in heaven, which accounts some of my heavy sadness during this time. Three years ago, we stayed in the hospital for about six weeks with Mama fighting a battle that she lost. You can not even begin to imagine how much you will miss a loved one until they are actually gone.

From Jeanne Oliver's Wandering Muse Course (link on sidebar)-

It has been a while since I watched the video for this class practice with India ink and sprayed water, and the first thing I realized is that I should have gessoed page first to get the effects that she taught, but I forgot, so the ink absorbed into the paper very quickly, but that's ok. And, again, the pages are actually white!

For a long time, I've been thinking about trying India ink in one of my water brush pens, and I decided to try it here. It works great, but you have to watch about ink blobs, and the medium round  brush is a bit like painting with a marker. Totally different feel than a regular paint brush dipped in the ink. But it works, and I'm going to try it on a gessoed page the next time with the spray bottle of water.

I tried spraying water on the ink, but the ink had already absorbed into the paper too much for the water to be very effective. I got a few runs, but couldn't work the ink further.

I made a bunch of scribbles on the page and quickly sprayed with water, the blotted it with the facing page and got these effects. Again, the paper absorbed too much of the ink to work it, plus the paper was buckling. I can see all sorts of animals in these scribbles, to be developed further! Fun!

Last one for this practice! I scribbled some flower shapes and quickly sprayed with a bit of water, then blotted with the facing page to get these shapes. Pretty cool, but will need more work! The shapes on the facing page kind of remind me of one of those little fish with the beautiful flowing tails and a seahorse!

For some reason, I always forget to gesso journal pages that I'm going to use paint and/or ink on, but it would definitely help about the absorption. Next time!

The main class in this course is a handmade plaster journal, but the other classes are techniques for drawing/painting things to add to the journal pages. I am anxious to make the journal, but, so far, things haven't worked out to do it. But they will! 🙂

Just some fun stuff to do to keep my mojo at least on simmer!