A couple things that you need to start off: so the first thing that you should have handy is some
paper towel. I'm gonna leave that on the side. Some q-tips. So this is in regards to some detail,
if you want to clean up certain spots that are a little trickier to get with your paper towel.
Any alcohol inks, I recommend starting off with Jacquard because they have an alcohol ink starter
pack for beginners. These are just some of the colours that Jacquard offers so you can see that
they have a very wide range of colours, which is just awesome to get started. So something
that you're going to want, you can't quite see it here, but that is the white. The white is
going to create a pastel effect for your colours, so it's actually really important to have. White
is a little bit trickier to manipulate in the beginning, so if you don't feel comfortable with
it, that's totally okay. But you want to make sure that you have a range of colours that you are able
to just experiment with. So after you get your colours, whatever that is, I would say experiment
with maybe one or two colours. I wouldn't push it further than that just to start off with,
you're just trying to get a feel for how the inks flow as opposed to finding colour combinations in
the beginning. You just want to get that flow. So I'm going to choose the teal to begin with
and we're going to hide all of our other colours for now. The next thing you want is your isopropyl
alcohol. Now I have two bottles and I always keep two different sizes with me. This bottle, I tend
to keep for bigger projects or if I want to flood my paper, and then I also have a tinier bottle
that came with a needle tip to begin with. The tip just broke off but it's totally okay. And this is
for precision, to add some position to my work, because if you have this and you're adding it,
you're trying to add alcohol to just like a small piece of the artwork, it might ruin something that
you've already created. So you want to make sure that you have something a little bit more precise
for a smaller piece. So you have your alcohol, I use 99.9% isopropyl. Super important that you have
a highly concentrated isopropyl alcohol, anywhere from 91- 99% and I talk about that in my other
beginner alcohol ink video, where I talk about all the different types of products that I
personally use, so you can definitely check that out. Now in terms of blowing out my ink,
I either use my breath, this manual pump, which can give you some pretty cool effects.
Or I also use a heat gun, and I use this in most of my projects. The thing I like about this heat
gun is that it has three different settings. So it's a little bit dirty right now but you can see
that it has one two and three so these are the different settings. One is super high and hot.
I almost never use that unless I'm working on a larger piece. If I'm trying to blow something out
really really quickly or if I'm simply just trying to dry something that is already almost dry,
because if something is not dry and you're putting it on the high heat setting,
you will move around the inks a lot and you might ruin the effect that you were trying to get,
or maybe like the specific shape. The second one is a low air hot setting.
So you can hear it's a little lower, it's really hot right now, and then the third one is higher
but it's cool air so it'll blow around your ink a lot but it will not dry it up because it's colder
air. So those are the things to keep in mind there. The next thing is if you're purchasing
bigger bottles like this, I recommend that you buy some pipettes along with it, so that you can pour
with precision. Or you can also opt for the needle tip bottles, which I will link in the description
below. Again the needle broke off this one, but you'll see that they come with like a precision
tip and they're honestly awesome because they're reusable so if there's a colour that
you use a lot, I recommend investing in these bottles. If you're just trying to experiment,
you can go for the pipettes. I bought like 200 of these I think disposable for like 10 dollars.
I'm just going to put my ink right in the middle here.
The thing I love about jacquard is that their inks are super concentrated, so you can just drop a few
drops of alcohol and just watch what the ink does, It's actually super cool what the ink does so
you can just almost observe it and see what's happening. I'm gonna go in with a little bit of
alcohol here, and wherever you put alcohol is where the inks are going to separate.
So you see that I've put the alcohol in here and then the inks are going to separate around.
So I'm actually going to go in with this and then we're going to see what happens.
To avoid these sharp edges, you just want to
go in with more alcohol. That's all you've got to do is to soften up the
edges.
So I've put in more alcohol here to soften up those edges and
I'm just going to blow a little bit , very lightly to push it and to create that fade.
And then I can do the same on that end.
The thing that's great about this is pushing the air around, but you're not quite
exactly going to dry it with this. This is where the heat gun would come in handy.
You can also use your breath to move it around. You can do some concentrated areas.
So let's say I want that to be a little bit darker and this to be a little bit lighter,
I'm not going to spread around the alcohol link as much. I might just
move it a little bit like that and then keep it in place.
I'm gonna go ahead and introduce a second colour. What I like to do when I am pairing colours
is to go for a complementary colour. So because i've chosen teal, I'm gonna go with the pink
since they are opposite. And I don't like to drop it right in the middle
because I feel like the colours mush, so what I like to do is I like to go around
the edges so that the colours blend a little bit
but not too too muchm so that you can still see their individuality.
So you want to make sure that there's alcohol wherever you're pushing out,
so if i want to push out this way , I want to make sure that this
area is covered with alcoho,l i'm just going to push it out like that.
Same on this side.
I would also recommend experimenting with blowing harder blowing softer if you're going to be using
your breath, and you can just play around if you want to mix it, you can see what colours that you
get. So we're getting kind of like a light lilac sort of colour there. Where I don't like the harsh
edges I will go in with more alcohol to soften it up . And I can do that completely until it
gets to the end of the paper, that way you see no hard edges there. You see where I have put a lot
of pressure blowing, there's almost no alcohol there and it creates this almost white effect?
The thing to keep in mind with alcohol is it separates your ink, so you might not necessarily
want that. That's why I only tend to add alcohol after it's set around the edges because it helps
to break apart the ink, but I wouldn't want to do it in the middle, because watch what's
going to happen if I just drop some alcohol in the middle. It will separate completely my work, and
that's okay if you want to add some effects like that, but if you accidentally drop some alcohol,
this is what's gonna happen to a piece that, like maybe there's like a section you liked or
whatever now, you have that. But what's cool is if I do this and then I blow it around...
I could get some really cool effects. So I could move around the ink a little bit and create
something that I actually end up liking. So you got to play around with it. This is no one size
fits all honestly, and different things, different techniques will obviously result in different
styles. So one thing I am going to show you here. This is Nara paper that I use . It is a synthetic
paper that does not stain. So that means if you take enough alcohol and start to wipe this will
completely come off. Not all papers on the market are like that, but this one's pretty damn good.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and do that. So after my demo, this is what I ended up creating. I am
going to be showing you how I created this piece in the video to come next week. I really hope you
enjoyed that, I really hope you benefited from the tips that I could offer you in this video for
alcohol inks for beginners, and if you have any other questions, please shoot me a DM @_dmpaints
on Instagram, or comment down in the comments below.. and I will see you next week ! Peace.