A visit to the art store this morning produced some inks I hoped would work like the originals. Some hope. The airbrush inks by Schmincke and Lukas are wonderfully translucent, but absorb water too fast, although they are acrylic, so it is impossible to make the patterns typical for suminagashi paper. The Sennelier calligraphy ink seemed less inviting, though maybe I should try it next time - it has a shellack base but does not dry waterproof as far as I could see, and I think that would be a disadvantage if I want to use the result as a background.
But I also bought a couple of bottles of liquid window paint, which is also used for ceramics, and that worked better. Window paint looks like ink, is water-based and a bit sticky. Though it sank in the water, the blobs did keep their form rather than disappearing, and I was able to slightly swirl round all the inks bought today before they merged. Here are the results of today's experiment.
None of the attempts so far has been satisfactory from the suminagashi point of view, but I plan to work them out as aquadoodles (which they already are), using pastels, pens and whatever else comes to hand.
Tomorrow I'm going to try oil paints diluted with white spirit, but I don't think there will be many tries at that because They will take longer to dry and I can't work on them until they are completely dry. I'm not sure how long the window paint (which ends up quite thick on the paper and is very glossy) will take to dry on paper, either.
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| Suminagashi 8 Black Indian ink and lemon yellow watercolour |
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| Suminagashi 9 Black Indian ink and lemon yellow watercolour |
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| Suminagashi 10 Airbrush ink and liquid window deco paint over airbrush ink |
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| Suminagashi 11 Airbrush ink |
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| Suminagashi 12 Airbrush ink |
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| Suminagashi 13 Window deco paint (liquid) over airbrush ink |
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| Suminagashi 14 Airbrush ink |
