Tuesday, 11 September 2018

Things You Should Know Before Learning How To Use Alcohol Ink

By Daniel Allen


Art and productivity are secondary innate attributes of man. Almost everyone will want to be creative at one point or another in their lives with many different kinds of mediums. One of these mediums is alcohol ink and yo may be wondering how to use alcohol ink for your next project. Before tackling the methods of how to use this type of ink, it may be a good idea to know what it really is first, and its many properties.

This kind of ink is a dye based ink. This basically means that whatever colorant is used to give specific tints and colors is fully dissolved in the liquid. It just basically means that due to the even distribution of colorant, you can use the ink right away without any need for shaking it first. This is with exception of inks with metallic or pearl essence, where you need to shake it first to get the settled particles remixed Into the solution.

As it does use alcohol this is one medium that will dry up very quickly compared to other art coloring mediums. In fact depending on the surface that you use, and also on the thickness of the color of whatever you choose, it will dry withing a very few seconds to almost just under a minute.

These inks must always be used on surfaces that they can glide across. This means that non porous and sturdy surfaces should be used such as ceramic, glass or plastic and not porous ones like paper or wood. Paper and wood will absorb the ink and the real magic of this medium will not be seen.

They come in general three groups of colors, being light pastel colors, standard regular colors or jewels, or earthy dark colors. The lighter colors will tend to spread out more than darker ones as they contain more alcohol. The darker colors, which contain more dye, will tend not to spread either. In essence the lighter colors will dry up faster than the darker ones due to the higher content.

If you are just beginning to dabble with this kind of medium, it is best that you just buy any of several starter packs that are out in the market. Starter packs come in one half ounce sized bottles with a few colors. Do not buy four ounce bottle packs as the one half ounce ones last for quite a while. Also you can extend your color range more by buying darker colors and diluting with alcohol to get other lighter shades.

When starting out with this medium it is important to know that the inks used on the surface will tend to push each other apart as alcohol does not mix. Thus if you have a design in mind you might take into account the use of colors and how to put it together for your desired effect. In simpler terms, the effect that you will get with this medium will be something akin to a stained glass window, where colors are not mixed but in fact very much delineated to give an overall effect.

It is also very important to remember that once your artwork dries it becomes resilient and waterproof. However it is not bullet proof. Thus if it comes in anyway with alcohol again, or alcohol based liquids, the inks will be reactivated. Once reactivated the inks become wet and will move around and destroy the original image.




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