Welcome! Can you handle a second "inky play day" post today? I have two more cards fronts on which I experimented with Copic Various Inks (refills) and Colorless Blender, aiming for a looser watercolor style. (Image is from the Peonies on Parade stamp set by Papertrey Ink, linked at the bottom.) On yesterday's post I used X-Press It Blender Card for my base, mostly for its smooth, uncoated surface. On today's first card, I tried MFT's Smooth White cardstock; it is a heavy cardstock and has a smooth finish--not quite as smooth as X-Press It, perhaps, but definitely both heavier and whiter.
First, a comparison of yesterday's image (on the right) and today's (on the left). I'll explain what I did differently on technique a little later, but I wanted to show you a color and value comparison first. Please note that I'm not unhappy with either one, and I can think of great uses for BOTH types! But they do give you a little different look, and you'll probably find that almost every paper you experiment with will give you different qualities to work with--that's the fun part! The color was darker and more vibrant on the whiter, thicker cardstock. (So then you have to decide whether you are going for a softer, lighter style, or for a richer, more intense style. Again--BOTH work, but they just work a little differently. (You should be able to click on a picture to see a larger version. On a Mac, the best way is to right click and select Open in a New Tab. I had to disable the feature that opened the full-sized picture with one click, because it was making all of the blog pictures low resolution. Sorry for the extra step!)
Yesterday I had saturated my cardstock with colorless blender before dripping reinkers directly onto the unstamped cardstock. On the piece above, I first stamped the image in MFT Black Licorice Hybrid ink onto MFT Smooth White cardstock and quickly dried the ink with my heat tool to be sure that it was well-set before inking with my Various Inks. (That may not be necessary, but I knew that it was going to get pretty wet before I finished, so I heat-set as a precaution.) I used an aquapainter/waterbrush filled with colorless blender solution to paint the peony and leaves with Various inks, and then I decided to airbrush the shadow areas and background. When you airbrush with Copics, the ink does not absorb into the paper the same way it does when you color directly onto paper with Copics; it sits on the surface of the paper and is easier to move around with colorless blender. That's why I airbrushed instead of dripping ink onto this cardstock. I wanted to see how much contrast and texture I could get if the ink were not fully saturating the paper before I started applying Colorless Blender. I did not use any masking, so the airbrushing is rough. Since I'm going for a looser look, however, having ink outside the lines doesn't bother me at all here.
Here I have dripped colorless blender directly from the bottle, AND spritzed colorless blender. Do you notice how much lighter the background is than the peony and leaves? That's because of the airbrushing on the background. I had already painted a layer on ink onto the flower and leaves, so they stayed darker when I spritzed with colorless blender. Colorless Blender WILL move Various Inks, but it moves them more when they are not deeply saturated into the paper.
Here I've pulled my markers out and started darkening in parts of the flowers and leaves, as well as some shadow areas. That messed up the nice texture in the shadows, but I'll just drip Colorless Blender on it again later. :-)
Here I've blended some of the color that I added on the previous step, and I've dripped and spritzed more Colorless Blender to get some of the texture back that I'd lost when I shaded with my markers. It was almost finished at this stage, though I fiddled with it more as I was making the card. That's one of my problems--not always knowing when to stop. . .
I have one more comparison for you: on the left is the MFT Smooth White cardstock with the airbrushed top layer--the one that you just saw up above. On the right is another piece of X-Press It Blending Card. The piece on the right was a disaster--seriously. I had over-inked it and let the colors get all muddy. I had also failed to clean my Craft Assistant (magnetic board), and had some Red-Violets that migrated back though the paper into the sky area when I wet the paper down with Colorless Blender. Truly, it could have won First Prize in an Ugly Contest. I wish I had a picture of it at its ugliest, but I wasn't planning to show it to you and didn't take a picture. Then I decided to keep playing with it for a while to see if I could rescue it. I knew the the surface of the X-Press It would hold up to a lot of abuse, so I abused it for the next two hours, and I think I like it now! It's definitely a darker and less vibrant piece, but it eventually worked out to be useable.
Here's a summary of the cardstock trivia and inking techniques that I've used over the past two days--the picture above is for you Pinners out there. :-) Lessons that I've learned over the past two inky play days:
- Yes, you can make Copic Various Inks look quite a bit like watercolors if you want to.
- It's worth trying different papers. Each will have different strengths and weaknesses.
- Try different methods of ink application, or a combination of them: straight from the bottle, spritzed, and painted on with a brush and colorless blender as the "water."
- If you think that a piece is past saving, keep playing with it. What do you have to lose? You might be able to say eat, and you should be able to learn from it even if you don't save the piece!
- Be generous with the Colorless Blender if you want a watercolor look.
Well, that's about it for my little Various Inks adventure. We're quickly coming up on MFT's March countdown, so you'll be seeing a lot of me this week! I didn't link everything I used below, but I did link the supplies that were most important to my topic. Thanks for visiting,
