Midnight Aquarium

From one of my alcohol ink try-outs, I created a pretty funky painting all colourful and oh so vivid.  It all started when I wanted to try an alternative paper from the more expensive Yupo Paper or canvas which are more suited to alcohol ink.  As I outlined in one of my previous blogs on Experimenting with Alcohol Ink, one of the alternatives was coating paper with Acrylic Gel Medium and letting it dry for 24 hours.  And this was the result.

The paper used was Canson’s Mixed Media Paper, a thick 300 gsm substrate with a rough texture.  As you can see, the ink didn’t flow and spread as it should and so I moved the paper around to let the ink run on its own accord.  But hey, I figured I could create something interesting out of this!  How about some fish?  So I outlined some and also some other creatures too (crabs?) and scumbled some blue around it.

I was not sure which blue to use.  And I felt that the scumbling patterns were distracting the pretty colours and outlines of the fish so I simply covered the background in one shade, a vivid dark blue, with Midnight Blue by Dylusions.  And wow!  Some white spaces on the fish were filled in with yellow India Ink.  To fill in some empty spaces in the background, I stencilled in some dots with white gesso and added some small doodly details with white Uni Posca pen and pink acrylic pen.  Et voila…

Once again, another stunning painting with stunning colours simply from trying out new art supplies.  Although plain paper, even when coated with gel medium, is not an ideal substrate for alcohol inks, it may be an idea to try this again sometime and see what other amazing stuff I can come up with!  I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of creating something out of a defect.  And who says we have to follow rules in art?