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India ink resists

Over in the Mixed Media forum of WetCanvas, our friend Sonia showed us a great tutorial on using gouache as a resist for India Ink. She works in watercolors, and the ink gave her piece a lovely "pop" that we all wanted to learn to do.

Well, I don't work with either watercolors or gouache very often, so I decided to try changing the method slightly so that I could at least give it a go with what I've got. I don't paint like Sonia does either (I'd be embarrassed to even show you a simple house and a tree), so I stuck with geometrics. I'm even slightly challenged with them as you'll see!

Here's what I did:
I used student grade oil pastels and rubbed them into my surface is a sort of spotty manner, so that the diamonds weren't completely solid.


It made a very bright - and unattractive - pattern. Then I sponged black India Ink all over it. The pastels act as a resist, but because I didn't apply them really heavily, the ink soaked into a lot of spots.


Before the ink had a chance to dry completely, I rinsed it off and patted the piece dry with some paper towels. I think I'll have to spray it with an acrylic or varnish to keep the pastels from rubbing off, but it looks a lot better to me. This certainly isn't a "finished" piece, but as a sample, I'm pretty happy with the effect!


Thanks Sonia!


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Comments

Jean Baardsen said…
Cyndi,
Thanks for sharing this! I'm exploring mixed media, and this sounds like something fun to try. Don't have gouache (sp?) either, but do have india ink and pastels.
Cyndi L said…
Yeah, I'm just not a gouache kind of a girl LOL! But you should definitely check out Wet Canvas for more examples :-)