Flame Froth

"Flame Froth"

6" x 6" Alcohol Ink on Ceramic Tile 

I picked up a couple of six inch ceramic tiles at my local thrift store. The ink had colored my four inch tile from my workshop so beautifully, I wanted more.

I wiped this piece five times before liking what was happening. Turns out working on tiles is even more quirky than painting on Yupo. And titling this one was difficult, too!

Fire In the Sky

"Fire In the Sky"

11" x 14"

Alcohol Ink on Yupo

This is another painting that began as a simple, single-layered piece... meaning that all the color was dropped on the wet alcohol on the first pass.  It was "nice" but it wasn't fab. 

I disrupted the niceness of the first layer by adding multiple layers on top. If you recall from an earlier blog I mentioned that when wet ink pushes away dry ink it forms "fences."  Well, the dark parts of any of these images are made by stacked up transparent colors. There is no black or so-called dark inks. They are all highly transparent, beautiful colors — just bunched up on top of one another to form dark.

 

Microcosm

"Microcosm"
14" x 11"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo 
It started out as a simple painting, but I had time, time to wait around to see what would happen... IF. There were a lot of "ifs" in this piece. I couldn't even tell you what happened between daiquiris and dinner, or baklava and bedtime. But I don't think I turned it into mud. 

"It is what it is,"says my friend, Mary.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
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Blue By You

"Blue By You"
11" x 14"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo 
I was building a blue painting when I picked up a bottle of "citrus" green instead, and placed a droplet into the blue. Yikes! It pushed the drying blue into a hard dark edge, but looked kind of interesting.  Then I intentionally dropped several drips of "cranberry" onto the blue and formed a little blue island surrounded by red.  

Intentional is not a word I associate with alcohol ink. Nor is deliberate. It's more like happenstance, WTF and whodathunkit.  

Carol 

Hubbub

"Hubbub"
14" x 11"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo
As this one progressed, I kept adding more and more color to the already-drying puddles. It's what made so many hard edges. A spritz here and there made the small dots. It seemed to have a landscape quality to it, but land that had been ravished, sort of earthquake-like. 

I really had to relinquish control of my normal style of painting during these three days.  I submitted to a seldom-used part of my brain to make most of these alcohol paintings.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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Scarletta

"Scarlett"
14" x 11"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo
I became bolder as I dripped ink onto the alcohol-moistened surface.  I combined a couple of different reds and perhaps a droplet of orange with three drips of yellow, in this instance. I allowed the puddles to dry without guiding or disturbing them. I did mist the top of the painting with alcohol, causing the pinkish splatters.  

I have a few more ink paintings to show you before moving on. Flowers are blooming in my zip code and they are beckoning me to uncap my oils.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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Stalks

"Stalks"
7" x 7"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo 
When I put the yellow ink down on top of a glaze of blue, the lines were as fine as pencil lead. But as it dried, the yellow pushed away the blue, mingled with some of it and made the image you see here. 

One more image remains in my bag of tricks. Oh, I painted a LOT more than these, but I will save them to post when I have a large project on my easel.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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You're So Vein

"You're So Vein"
11" x 14"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo
This painting turned out to look like a cross section of some fantasy place. It just happened as I played at the workshop a week ago. 

I had spritzed, which made tiny dots, then I pressed the crumpled clear wrap in which my pad of Yupo had been sealed, and stopped  messing with it as the ink dried (really fast). The pathway to draw veining with a fine-point Sharpie presented itself. So I drew little coils along the trail and knew a little of that would go a long way.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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Embrace

"Embrace"
9" x 12"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo
Oh, boy, you must think I've abandoned my oils for alcohol ink. Well, I haven't. In fact, while these are posting, I'm working on commission pieces, including a dog portrait! Yes. I'm doing a pastel painting of a pooch. 

Here is a combination of many of the techniques I learned from Pat Hamm. My work is nothing like hers. It would be almost impossible for me to duplicate her efforts in this medium. Nope, hers are hers, mine are quite definitely mine.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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Greenly

"Greenly"
3.5" x 7"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo 
I fully intended to do more to this... after lunch on Tuesday of last week, but when I got back and saw the edges where the green and yellow had met and became fast friends, I left it alone. 

It's hard to leave a small painting alone that has the potential to become a learning experience, but it happened several times during the workshop and THAT alone was a part of my growth. "Don't dink with it," a phrase my friend and I threw back and forth when we painted murals together, kept playing in my head.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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Marks

"Marks"
7" x 7"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo
I was free to explore on my own, after the demo, so I deferred to my primary colors. I feel safe with good ole red, yellow and blue.

The surface was wet with ink, so I applied clear alcohol to the foam stamp and impressed it into the blue. It picked up color. I put it back on the surface and impressed and picked up again, moving across the page. Then I added droplets of yellow in the whitened areas and finally red in the stamping closest to us. Entirely a learning experience.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
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Dance-Ink

"Dance-Ink"
14" x 11"
Alcohol Ink on Yupo
This was one of my first attempts at controlling the uncontrollable medium of alcohol ink. What is it, you ask?  Alcohol ink is the ink you apply to rubber stamp pads.  The craft of stamping has given us a new medium to play with. Ttransparent ink dripped on a sheet of Yupo (PVC plastic in sheet form) coated in alcohol is quite the wrestling match to watch. On this piece, I used a yellow, blue and red to create what you see here. It didn't begin ANYTHING like this, but when it stopped moving (dried) this is how it ended.  

Tomorrow I'll show you how AI looks when you TRY to control it.  I put on my cowgirl boots and grabbed a lasso...  well, you'll see.

Carol

Brushstrokes@comcast.net
CarolKeene.com
Dailypaintworks.com
Dailypainters.com