Addicted to Alcohol Inks

As someone who's sold hand-painted wine glasses for the past 12 years, I find my latest obsession with alcohol inks a fitting pairing. Using these inks is like painting with vibrant, highly pigmented water, but they are blended using rubbing alcohol. I only recently discover these potent little magical inks and having spent some time exploring different techniques using them--I'm totally hooked. I love them! They feel like a blend of marbling meets watercolor. So vibrant, so difficult to control, and such a fun challenge to manipulate something without structure into something structured and beautiful.

And it's so true, there is beauty in the chaos.

This post is full of images of my recent paintings on Yupo paper, glass, ceramic and canvas using alcohol inks and in some works, mixed media inks along with acrylic paints like in the forest below.

 

What I love most about these paints is that they allow you to achieved levels of visual detail that would take forever using different mediums. But this layered look is quickly accomplished with these types of inks. 

 

The process is a stinky one! Make sure to work using gloves and in a VERY well ventilated room, ideally outside on a nice breezy day.

 

This last image is mixed media with the inks and Pebeo porcelain 150 ceramic paints. There isn't a surface you can't use these inks on! But the more non-porous the surface, the more the inks will float and move around creating their unique affects. I hope you'll give alcohol inks a try! 

Love any of my paintings? These originals are for sale.  Just click on the image you like to see availability. (If the link is dead, that means the original already sold).

Cheers and hope you enjoyed this!

Very best,
Mary Elizabeth