Ep. 21, Page 33

smbhax on Jan. 12, 2014

I put that experimental pen ink and watercolor drawing I did yesterday up for auction right here on eBay–starting at 99 cents, as usual. It looks like this:

The waterproof ink from the pens I used (a Tikky Graphic 0.3 and a Faber-Castell “big brush”) held up fine under the watercolor, but I don't think the ink and watercolor looked like they belonged together–it was better before I added the watercolor, I mean, which is not a feeling I have when using watercolor over pencil or over lines “inked” with watercolor. Watercolor over ink lines is fairly common in illustration as far as I can see, but the examples I've seen tend to use the watercolor in just a sort of “fill in the lines” sort of way, rather than as a reflection of light, which is what I prefer to go for–and I think the watercolor is usually just used to fill in the lines because the black of the ink is on a value scale outside the reach of watercolor, so there's always going to be a discontinuity between the two; on watercolor, the ink is deadening both directly in terms of perceived color intensity, and on a more abstract level, in that its nearly absolute black interrupts the illusion of a light-filled space otherwise created by the watercolor.
There's probably some way that can be used constructively, but I think it would be tough to do with pens, which is a shame because they're pretty handy things otherwise. KimLuster helped me find some examples of brush-applied ink used pretty effectively in a light-enhancing manner with watercolor–basically used as a dark silhouette, or as smoke; rates alizarin crimson watercolor poorly in lightfastness, and it also looks pretty dull in their sample photo, so I don't think I'd really want to use it on its own. : p)