You can be as long with the artists who work with alcohol ink and you will see something humorous. Their styles are not alike, but casual, restrained, uncontrollable, excessively minimal, they all quietly count on the same gimmick. Click for source here for recent info!
It is not an elegant work. It is not a hidden brand.
It’s timing.
To be more precise: it is not the number of times when blending solution or alcohol is added, but the time.
The first ones are mostly flooding on the surface. It all disperses, colors intermingle and it looks cool five minutes. Then it becomes muddy. Flat. Kind of lifeless.
Professionals wait.
They enabled the ink to partially dry. Not fully dry. Nor soaking wet as well. That awkward half way standing where the sides start sticking to the surface but the centre remains loose. It is where the magic lies.
Put a little isopropyl alcohol in at that point and the reaction is a lot different. It does not scrape it all off, it causes the pigment kicked out in these soft, organic ripples. You get depth. You get contrast. You have the petal-like ones which are reputed to be hard.
They’re not.
They are simply put in the time.
I got to know this the hard way. Initially, I would still strive to correct the circumstances by pouring more alcohol. More blending solution. More everything. It made it always difficult. The colors were depersonalized. It was as though it were batter into the pan–and when it was in it was out.
One day I was inattentive, however (this is with the phone, actually), and I came back a minute later, and spilled alcohol on semi-dried ink by mistake.
That one was a hundred times better than what I was going to do.
I do it deliberately since that time.
The other thing that the pros do–they see what the sides do. This is the subtle shift of alcohol ink whereby the shine dims off slightly before it sets. That’s your window. Forget it and the liquor will lie there. Rap it on the door and it opens.
And this is what people do not wish to hear, it is not consistent.
Humidity changes it. It is distorted by the quality of paper or yupo. The time is changed by the weight of your first drop. You do not have a formula to master.
You sort of get a feel of it. Sharing cooking with no quantification.
At this point the surface is tilted at a slight angle by other artists and alcohol is poured into it. Not to shoot the stream,–to shoot it radically. It invents such long, light, airy gradients, which are not formal but still deliberate.
You will have to test it too soon, and all will slide. O, it is too late, there is nothing going on.
It also does not have a restraint factor that is dealt with appropriately. Professionals stop sooner. They do not proceed poking the piece just because they can. When that opportune blossom follows they leave it.
That is the actual discipline.
Such overworking is required of alcohol ink. It is virtually pleading to it.
But the best of these are definitely not interventions that are continuous, but instead one or two timely ones.
This is why when your work appears to be flat or chaotic as such then it is probably not your tools or colors.
It’s your timing.
And as it hits it steals a couple of bad pieces. That’s normal.