Blog: Acrylic Ink

A Look Back – Acrylic Ink in Action!

A Look Back – Supplies are one of the things that really inspire me and it’s easy to amass a ton of them… and then kinda forget what you have. When I moved recently I was reminded of all the wonderful acrylic inks I have that are good for so many different techniques. It is such a useful supply that I include it in my Art on the Go Kit too lol. Anyway, all this inspired me to work with them again but also to put together this Look Back post focusing on Acrylic Ink.

Sketching with acrylic ink is a favorite of mine. I like to use a bamboo sketching pen and work on deli paper. It’s a loose and freestyle sketching that takes a bit of patience and multiple dips in the ink to complete, and when it’s done I can use matte medium to seamlessly add it into my art journal. Acrylic ink won’t reactivate with water so then you can go in and add color and detail with all different types of media. Here’s the original post for this art journal page.

The density of color in acrylic ink is really appealing. I made a video here back in 2015 showing just how yummy it is to use acrylic ink over gesso. Backgrounds with this technique can be bold and bright or subtle depending on your color choices. It’s fun to experiment!

Acrylic ink plays well with lots of other media. In this art journal page I began with white spray paint and my Flower Maze stencil. Once the spray paint dried, I spread acrylic ink on the page and then wiped the ink away using a baby wipe. It had soaked into the blank page but wiped to reveal a lighter blue where the spray paint was. I like this two-tone effect.

For a more dramatic resist technique, I like to pair it with embossing ink and a foam stamp like my Mid Century Squared stamp. Do your embossing and once it’s set just brush on acrylic ink and gently wipe. The smooth embossing will resist the acrylic ink and reveal the stamped embossing pattern. Check it out here in this Foam Stamplifier post.

Playing with this resist is also a fun way to finish a page. Here in this art journal spread I used spray paint with a hand cut stencil and acrylic paint with my Groovy foam stamp. When everything was dry I painted yellow acrylic ink over the whole thing – it doesn’t overpower anything but ties it all together. Done :)

One more example of sketching with acrylic ink above :)

I hope you enjoyed this Look Back post and will try your hand at some of these techniques. Acrylic Ink is super fun, versatile, and comes in the whole rainbow of colors to fit anyone’s aesthetic. Here are some of the supplies I used in the projects above:

A Look Back is a blog series to show you some projects and posts that you may have missed – sometimes going WAY back in the archive. I think it’s fun to revisit a few ideas that we haven’t seen for a while. I’m excited to see how a little look back might inspire something new in the future :)

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Where You Find Light – Art Journal

Here is a another art journal spread using the hand carved stamp I showed in my Creative JumpStart 2019 class video ( you can still join us if you want – lots of fun tutorials). Here I inked it up with black archival ink

and used it cut apart as shown in the tutorial. I also used it with my RubberMoon Rubberstamps – I love the mix of hand carved and hand sketched next to each other.

I painted the stamped images and the background in with acrylic inks and acrylic gouache and added the journaling with a white sharpie. Love how the colors glow.

Here are some of the supplies I used for this spread:


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Wherever you go… AJ

“Wherever you go becomes part of you somehow”

I believe that the short trip to Japan has definitely become a part of me somehow :)

I played with my new inkstick and inkstone for the sketch and marks and added a piece of a paper bag from a store.

I had to use it- although I am not quite sure what it depicts. I flicked some gold with a brush and added the journaling with a fude pen.

Here are some of the supplies I used for this Art Journal page:


Comments (2)

  • Sue Clarke

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    Love the use of the store bag…I do that often from vacations.

    Reply

    • nathalie-kalbach

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      Love that you do that too ! Sometimes the bag is a better treasure than the content- LOL

      Reply

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The Small Things in Life – Art Journal

I created this Art Journal spread on a snowy day last week – as you can probably guess :)

The lady is drawn on deli paper, stamped and pasted into the journal. I stamped with different of my ArtFoamies Designs and then painted with grey and white. I like how it came out.

For the journaling I used a bamboo sketching pen and ink – I love using a bamboo sketching pen – have you ever seen my video I once made of the match made in heaven? It is a bit older but you might still find it interesting to see how I use those pens with the ink

Liquitex Ink and Bamboo Sketching Pen from Nathalie Kalbach on Vimeo.

Here are some of the supplies I used with the art journal spread


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