Art Supply Junkie

Alcohol Inks On Yupo - 5x7"

I said in my last post that I was fickle when it came to art media but I think it's more that I'm an art supply junkie.  The truth be told, I like experimenting with various arts and crafts supplies and yesterday I finally got around to playing with the alcohol inks.

It was the perfect day for it as we've been pretty much iced in since last Friday as the so-called big storm hit us before making it's way further north and east.  Since we knew the storm was coming, we went out on Thursday and I was able to buy some Adirondack inks at Michael's.  Fortunately, my DH & I both had a coupon and I still had money left on the gift card the grandchildren gave me for Christmas.  I still didn't get all the colors I wanted but got enough to play with and I also had the homemade inks from last week.  I didn't use them much in this painting but they seemed to work as well as the purchased inks.

Not great by any means but I had expected it to be a whole lot worse.  These inks are somewhat like watercolor in that they have a mind of their own plus you rarely do well the first time out of the gate.  It didn't help that the Adirondack inks were marked with esoteric names like "Stream", "Wild Plum", "Citrus" and looked different on Yupo than they looked on either the label or in the bottle.  I need to make a color chart so I'll know what's what!

This is my first alcohol painting and I'm fairly pleased with it.  Can I see room for improvement?  Definitely! But I hope to learn how these inks work by practicing and hopefully a masterpiece will eventually emerge!