Bottled rainbows - rediscovering artist inks

Got into artist/acrylic inks again recently - they are jewels in a bottle. I’ve had a bunch stashed away for years. Some of them, sadly, were so old that the fluid had dried up leaving a lump of grounds rattling around the bottle. Searched far and wide on how to reconstitute them, hacked at them, watered them down, stabbed them with sharp point to no avail. This stuff is super hard. Sigh. They had to go in the bin. I hated that cos they were probably wonderful colours.

Lesson: this is what happens when you buy art stuff with no clear idea of what you want to do with it.

Still, I have three bottles left of the good stuff. I needed to know if they were lightfast as they need to be for work that will be sold. The website of this particular brand didn’t seem to be up to date and the FAQs didn’t even work, so I searched through other sites and found a wealth of information on inks in general. This www.jacksonsart.com/a-guide-to-ink. was a really helpful resource.

Turns out there are many different types of ink for different uses and far more brands than you tend to see in the art shops. I learned that pigments are superior to dye based inks and don't fade over time; unless they're fluorescent, in which case they will, and only some are ok to use in fountain pens or air brushes.

Anyhow, I sent a query to a specialist pen shop www.writeherepens.co.uk in my old county of Shropshire, in the lovely market town of Shrewsbury (terrific garden festival every summer – I do miss that). They replied with a couple of links for people who had done their own research on fade times for the brand I was looking at, which was pretty helpful. The internet is a wonderful thing. So many really, really informed ‘nerds’ on any subject you care to mention who happily put all their knowledge and their own research online for people to learn from.

So an impromptu trip to Kingston again and spent nearly forty quid on inks and a packet of pipettes. I was only going to buy about five...I've tested all the colours both pure and on damp paper and done a couple of rough tests on some sketches as well.

I think the effect of dropping colours into wet and allowing them to blend slightly looks quite good. The other drawings showing on the image are just playing around with pens. They might get a colour treatment too; I'm just trying to find a technique which keeps the style loose but has that something which is all my own. Lots of ideas to test.

So anyhow, being an of an organised mind-set (soo un-artist like apparently), I went round all the online art supply companies and made a document with the basic details of each brand, added their colour charts and compared the prices so I know where to get each brand at the best price. I have this for canvases, acrylic paints, packaging companies and framing/matting suppliers. Just saves time to know what’s out there and where the best price is. It also means I have all the info I need at hand to calculate my annual art expenses. Apparently artists aren't very good at doing stuff like that either.

I'm sure there's a bit of a joke around this notion of flaky creative people, but it gets mighty boring and annoying when a huge chunk of what you read goes down this road. Everyone is different. Some artists are shit hot business people and really marketing savvy. Better to look at what skills you need to learn, decide to learn them, and if you then find you're just not very good at it, find a way to skill swap with someone who is. But if you let other people tell you what you are and horrors - ever believe all that starving artist crap or some weird nonsense like selling art is selling out, well, you will struggle because you've put the shackles on yourself before you even get started.

Down with labels I say! Ditch your affiliations and your -isms. Define yourself and decide for yourself what and who you are and leave all the arguing about who is right to others (no one ever wins anyway). You'll have other things you need to be doing.