India Ink Techniques

on paper is pretty sturdy so you can do a lot to it but if you really want to get the paper wet and work on it a lot you may want to get like a mixed-media or a watercolor paper to work with you'll find those are have more cotton in them so though they can expand and they won't wrinkle and disintegrate like the paper pulp paper so whenever we're working with ink or anything like paint on paper it's hard if you want anything to be white like the paper you have to just leave that area alone right and so when you're new it may be a challenge to do that so they make several things that we call resist to keep your paper nice and white one of the things you can use is rubber cement and rubber cement it's not really healthy to breathe but as long as you put the cap back on pretty quickly you can you can't put other brushes in it but the brush that comes with it it's kind of a coarse and but the rubber cement is also clear so wherever you put it down you really can't see it always but it will seal the paper and once it's dry when you put the ink over it is the ink won't go in those areas and then when everything is dry you can rub it off and it'll leave your paper nice and clean but not always perfectly because depending it's it's not as easy to use but something that works really well is called a masking fluid or sometimes you'll see it called frisket is called frisket on that paper that I gave you and this is a liquid latex rubber that has a dye in it that doesn't stain paper I don't know what magic diet is but I'm shaking it because it's like a yellow dye and it makes it a little off-white and a lot of water called anything I'll show you you can do with watercolor and ink okay the only thing that won't work is if you get like acrylic ink sometimes they won't do the same technique so this smells like it smells like a rub like a rubber band it has like a really sticky I don't know how to describe it but do you see this brush this was a brush and now it's like rubber and so that's what happens to it and it has this off-white color so if you do a drawing and like pencil you can take like a brush you don't want to ever use again for anything else and you could put this stuff on and you don't want it to be too thick or it's gonna take a long time to dry but do you see how you can see it where you can't really see the rubber cement you can also like it's so precise if I just splattered like little dots of it those will dry and it will keep those nice and clean and I've done paintings before with an ink and watercolor where I'd splattered and made like several layers of stars like in the sky and when it all dried and I rubbed them off like it looked like a photograph like it would it's like it's really precise so it's kind of fun and I have OCD so I love picking at things and this is really fun it's like pilling rubber bands off your paper so it's kind of fun but you don't want to use a brush because this it's ruined once you use it but they do make some little rubber things you can use with this but it's really cheap I actually got this at Walmart they had it on the arts and crafts al but you can get it up Michaels and Hobby Lobby in places like that too so I did these first just because they have to dry before you put the ink on him another thing you can use is wax so crayons work really nice so you could take you could use color crayons as well but if you use like a black crayon and then black ink you're not gonna see it but you could take and put text or press down hard with like a white crayon or even a color crayon and then when you put the ink over it the crayons gonna keep from absorbing into the paper and so it looks really cool but you can't get the wax off the paper ever so it kind of stays there and then another thing you can use is candles like these are little clear tea candles and you can use those and just lightly rub them on the paper and you can kind of create gradations sometimes depending on how hard you press down but it will also resist the ink but again you can't really get the wax off the paper once it's done so all of those are different ways you can keep areas of your paper white with when you're using watercolor or India ink okay now to work with the ink more traditionally we create washes and to me this is a very simple concept but sometimes students don't quite get it so basically it's different amounts of water and ink so the more water and the less ink the lighter value that it will be so there's a painting I did with like someone with like eyes in the back of their head and so the eye part that I did with doing this technique I made different washes and painted it just like a value study and so if you want to do something like that this is how you would do that so in one of these little wells I'm gonna just put one drop of ink okay and then I'm gonna skip one and these little wells you can get these at the craft store to you or Walmart or you can even use like an old ice tray if you have like an ice tray in your freezer and if you have plastic egg cartons those work as well but sometimes the styrofoam ones well like disintegrate they're made to be more degradable now but you can find these or use little plastic cups or whatever you want so I just put one little drop in one well and then I'm going to put like two or three and this one and I'm skipping because I don't I don't want that many different values now if you move around a lot you may put a piece of paper under this and label it like lightest or one two three so you know which ones are darker and which ones are not this one it's about five or six so I'm gradually adding more ink to each one and I am counting the dots because if they're doesn't give me some precision to it okay and then in the middle I usually just put some pure black ink if I want that now what I'm gonna do to create the different values is I'm gonna take this as just a little mirror dropper that I filled it with water so I'm gonna fill them all to the same point with water and so the one with the less ink it's gonna have more water and less ink so I'm just gonna fill them all up to the same level [Music] and a lot of times I see students using pallets like this for an acrylic and oil and these are not this is a leak but these are not for oils and acrylics so these are made for liquid media so you would use these for like watercolor and an ink only because you can't really mix the different values of acrylic and oil in these little holes so now I'm going from the lightest value to the darkest value just kind of stirring it with this stick and then now when I'm going to just put it on the paper up here to show you the the range of values so it should make like a lighter value now on the drawing paper you'll see like it kind of puddles a little bit but on the watercolor paper it just like soaks in right away so you may get some inconsistency just because the drawing paper is not as absorbent but it'll still work now I'm not touching these next to each other because they'll bleed into each other so if you're gonna do a value study in in ink you'll want to do like all one let it dry and the other otherwise though they'll bleed into each other do you see how they're gradually getting darker so you may have a drawing class in the future maybe a figure drawing class where your teacher tells you you bring ink one day and you may have to make these values and then have a model and you'll have to draw the model using ink so you may have to use it more traditionally in some classes so you can see that's not even the pure black II that's the the last one that I made but I have these different values so you could just use those and then the dark dark one you can see it's like really really black but it draws really flat and it absorbs in the paper so it's a little different and like using acrylic paint or anything like that so these should be dry now where I put these resists and you can see this was the rubber cement and you can see it's resisting the ink but once it dries completely then you could rub off the rubber cement and then this is that Triscuit or the mmmm masking fluid and you can see it resisted it a lot and again you want to wait till the ink dries and then you can pick off that and your paper will be nice and clean and then I think I put the crayon somewhere around here and you can see it resisting and once it's dry you can take a damp paper towel and kind of buff it and it will come out more and then this area I had the candle and you can see how it is resisting I'm as well so it's kind of like the cupboard all right so those are the resists that's how you create the values now for some of the more fun stuff I'll show you you can wet the paper and I forgot to get a cup with water you guys can use any of these cups and stuff over about the scene so one technique you can do is called wet-on-wet and that's what that lady was doing in that video that sounds kind of dirty but it's it's just wetting the paper and then putting the ink on it but it's really fun i'm and kind of exciting especially to like children they get more excited about these kind of things but you can take a brush or whatever and when you put the ink on the wet things in it I appreciate but to me it's that's kind of cool you can when you even if you drop like splatters on it they'll bleed out and you can use it with watercolors too but it's kind of fun so you may have like if you're doing a painting of the sky and there's all these clouds that kind of bleed you may wet the paper and just kind of let it be more expressive instead of trying to paint them you know perfectly like you could let it be more I'm kind of expressive like that let's say that you're painting with the ink and you want it to kind of bleed out but just in one area you could take like a little small spritzer and just spritz it like in certain areas there that kind of control like where you want it to bleed if you if you want to and then you can also draw with different tools so this is just a bamboo skewer and I have some more here that you guys can take one if you wanted this is what you use to cook with you can get them really cheap but these work really great they're pretty absorbent and so like you can see like you can make a lot of marks before it runs out of ink so even if you don't have like a fancy quill you could just dip it into the ink and do you like hatching or lines in there's something about the liquid ink that looks really nice and it won't smudge like once it's dry like you can put your hand over it and it won't smudge and you don't always have to use the dark green so if you had lighter value inks you could still do the same thing so this is where I got told off like I used to have the students on a stick in the woods to draw it so it would make really unique marks like those so you can lose that you can find these little quills and nibs at the craft stores and I think this is one I got at Walmart and it has the different calligraphy tips if you want you want to make sure you wash these though because if the ink dries in it it won't flow the same way but these are kind of fun and I mean they make similar marks but sometimes you can get some that are even finer than the bamboo stick I can't it's just kebab think I don't know yeah so anyway you can see like how super fine this one is and I have some that are like at angles and you can do like the calligraphy the fancy letter writing and stuff with so um you can draw a lot of different things you can also try using different brushes so this is a more traditional brush that I got at the dyso store and so you can use it you know the more like expressive way I don't know the ancient arts but you can you know use different types of regular paintbrushes to also use tooth brushes to create gradation kind of like spray paint you don't want to use one that you're gonna want to use again for your teeth but feel free to use an X's or something like that but you dip it into the ink you don't want to if you have like if you wait tables or do something retail where you have to use your hands you probably want to put gloves on because it will stain your hands for a few days but I don't have to anymore so I'm just gonna flick it towards the paper with my thumb and you can see it creates like a this airbrush sort of technique so you can create gradation about doing it more in one place you're doing it lighter in one place and it's kind of fun and soft and I don't know I really like doing this but I'll have a black thumb for a couple of days now because this is permanent it will it will stain once it dries it's that stain so be careful with your clothing and and things like this but you can also use stencils so like if you have like a stencil or I'm just gonna put this candle here you can tip the ink in it and then just kind of go around it and it will work as a stencil that has the look of spray-paint without having to use the harsh chemicals but you see it so it's kind of fun so you don't have to do any of these things but you could I just want you to see like this one little jar Venus filled with surprises or I mean fun things you can also you can see there's a couple of puddles ink here you can take a straw and blow the ink around my ones are not healthy right now so I can't blow super hard but these you can put and it makes looks like little tree branches or veins and I had one of my students from she from TCC she's now a elementary school teacher she teaches I think kindergarten through eighth grade and every year she has me it's a private school she has been come and judged like her students art show and for each grade and so it's it's kind of cool cuz a lot of the assignments we did in college she found simple ways for her students to do one of those things and one of the things she does with the kindergarteners is she gives them a long piece of watercolor paper and then she puts a drop of ink and makes him try to blow it all the way down the heads of the paper and so it ends up looking like a long tree branch and then they paint little red flowers on it and it looks like a Japanese cherry blossom and they look so good and she says some of them pass out because they forget to breathe so it's pretty fun so like even the simple thing ink just had this sort of lively quality to it that's that's kind of nice and then some other little things you can do to create like an effect the opposite of the wet-on-wet you can use alcohol this is rubbing alcohol and you have to do this pretty quick like a lot of these things you have to do quick like while it's wet so you can't you know be too slow with it but if you put the ink down and then drop the alcohol on it do you see how it's creating kind of like this acid wash effect and it like pushes the ink the way so it kind of looks like the opposite of that I had a chemistry teacher she came to my class a few semesters ago just to observe and I was doing this the day she came and she was like this is called osmosis or I don't know what she was saying this is called this and every little technique I did she had a scientific term for it and I was like get out of here language we call it magic if she like she literally she's like oh like she had a scientific name for like all the transfer of I guess there's some there's some I guess it's like about the alcohol that that making it evaporate or something I don't know but anyway so you can use the alcohol another thing you can use is salt and I have like a finger salt there but if you put while the ink is wet if you take some salt and put it on it you have to do it while it's wet and then just let it dry it'll take a while to dry but once it's completely dry when you dust the salt off it leaves like a grainy texture that kind of looks like sand and you can see some I labeled all these techniques over here and you can see where I've done them in watercolor to you so you can see some of those effects but you can kind of see around the salt crystals it kind of pushes the gunk away and she had a scientific term for that too you remember it was and then I think I have but I don't know if this is exciting to you guys but I've done it about a 200 times probably and I still get excited and I saw this on YouTube and I was like get out of here and so you can put the ink in the kids bubble solution but it makes the bubble solution permanent so just beware if you have small pets that have light colored fur and they the bubbles get on them I had some different colored dogs for a couple of weeks but when you when you blow up the bubbles you have to kind of learn to control it and you will get black freckles if you're too close just that's why but it creates these like sea life looking amoeba yeah see I learned something in science but you can't always control but they just create little pools like Spears but you have to get the solution just right when I saw this video I went out and bought all kinds of color inks and I got a bubble gun like I have the time I lived in an apartment and I covered my patio with like I bought a roll of watercolor paper and I just rolled it out and I had two doors on my balcony one from my bedroom and one from the living room and I forgot the one was cracked and I was out there with permanent minks like just blowing all different colored bubbles and my dogs ran out and it was a mess but I had some really cool paper for awhile that I would just use with these different colored things on it but hopefully this is kind of exciting to you again you may not use any of these techniques but I wanted you to see that with just a small little jar of mean there's all these different possibilities and you know if you do rubbings like you could do rubbings with crayons and then when you put if you put ink over it it'll show through so there is a way you can kind of combine these together but I still want you to do at least two drawings so you may do more than two and you know so have fun experiment there's more examples for you to look at feel free to take pictures of some of this stuff and you know if you have if you just have like a block in my photo that you want to work with you could just do a black and white value study with the ink and mix the values and you know just pans they don't feel like you have to go wild and crazy and combine too many techniques together you could just kind of keep it simple and do one or two I just wanted you to see that you know those of you that like to work more with a ballpoint pen you might have fun just dipping a stick in and drawing with it those of you that like to do watercolor may find working like this way maybe and you can use colors so I have some things here these I got at Michaels there were only like $10 but these are watercolor markers and these will probably fade over time but as long as you get a good photo you know with social media nowadays that's all you kind of need but these have like a brush tip and then they also have a like marker tip but you can come back with a brush and water and blend them into each other so they're like water soluble markers and so you can use them together so they're kind of fun and then I know I mentioned and color pencils whenever we were doing color and so they have water soluble color pencils that you can also color with and then use water and blend them to look like watercolor if you don't want to get a super messy these are are kind of fun and they blend and some of them like I've you been drawn with them where I wanted like a bolder line I don't know if you're supposed to do this but I'll dip them in the water and then they kind of make marks like a marker wood so I don't know if it's good for the wood but anyway and then you can also find this is where I get a little crazy but you can find like complete sets of colored inks and these ones I haven't figured out how to I guess you have to shake it for a long time but these ones are actually iridescent I don't know why I was medicine not taking that day but I felt like and but you can see it's like a whole tray of these and they sell these at Michaels and Hobby Lobby and if you get like one of those 50% off coupons and they they're not all iridescent you can get just like regular colors or transparent colors and they're like watercolor but they're permanent inks and it's pigmented so unlike it'll be like the calligraphy means in that video they won't fade but they are kind of expensive so I think this set was like around 25 or $30 for all of these but that's to me that's a lot of ink and I haven't used them just because anyway so there's lots of things out there feel free to use mixed-media you know when the ink dries it's still got the texture of the paper so you can use your pastels on top of it you can use your charcoal with it so that one guy that remember those birds I've showed y'all he used like charcoal and pastel on top of the ink so have fun like experiment but don't just sit and be stuck with your ideas like okay try to try to just do several things like start several I'm once at home I'll work on like four or five paintings at the same time so instead of just thinking like what do i do just commit to something and if you finished you can always do something else if you don't like it okay and if you have any like reference photos or things you want me to print you can email them to me and I'll print em for you to look at if you want okay so and if you want to see I know this isn't completely let me try to blot off the excess but if you wanted to see how these things you can see the finished effects on the board but like the rubber cement it's kind of a since it's not dry it may smudge a little bit but you can see you can kind of rub it off you don't have to but you can but it's it's it's it's not super easy to do it but like this stuff like it's literally like killing a rubber band off your paper and it's very and see like you can just rub those little dots off and it's like perfect yeah anyway so have fun if you have those questions like can I do this you don't even have to ask okay if there's ink on one and there's rubbings on one that's all that there has to be

Channel: Brett Dyer

Views: 6,510

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Id: DXtorzwDO-w

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020