Tulips: A Demonstration using Acrylic Inks

[Charlie's Mum]

If you would like to ask questions about this kind of work, here's the link to the WDE tulips thread, where you can post and I can answer

One way to use Acrylic Inks.

I managed to take progress shots of most of the stages of this work on the Tulips painting - though inevitably, some were not possible as the inks sometimes needs other colours adding whilst still wet.!

I did this on Hahnemuhle w/colour paper, matt finish, 140lbs.
This is a harder paper than Arches and Bockingford, with a slighter texture and good for taking pen as well as brushes: it also is better than softer papers if masking fluid is used.

It's 8 x 12ins.

These are the inks and brushes used for this painting -
Magic Color Inks in -
Cobalt Bl, Gamma Green, Process Yellow, Astral Yellow, Solar Scarlet and Mars Red.
Brushes - Pro Arte Prolene size 14 and a sable size 3



I cropped the reference picture by Lori (blu-ize) so the emphasis was on a few tulips only and then did a very light pencil drawing to place the blooms.
Actually, lighter than shown in the 'enhanced' scan here.



The next stage was to consider the background which I wanted to be fairly dark to increase the lightness of the tulips (hopefully!).

I made a mix of the Green, Blue and Astral Yellow .... I used this green, even though it's blue/green because the Sap green I have is opaque and I wanted more transparency.

I wet the ground with clean water and then used the mix to paint around the flowers, taking some care and working quickly before it dried - when it becomes immovable!
Then I splashed water from the brushes and hey presto, this was the result!



Sorry, the photo seems quite dark - poor light by then!

[Charlie's Mum]

I let the back ground dry before adding a wash of Astral yellow - it's a lemon colour, so used it to brighten the greens.
When it was almost dry I added a few leaf-like strokes of both the yellow and the green/blue mix for greater variation.



Then it was time to add some colour to the tulips.
This was done with well-known w/colour techniques - wetting/dampening the shape of a petal and allowing the pure colour to flow from the brush tip and bleed into the damp ground.
Where two colours bleed into each other, make sure the brush is clean before loading with the second colour.

Where a single colour red tulip was used, and appeared to fade to pale pink, I simply allowed some white paper to remain and gently teased weak colour into some of the damp white areas.
To strengthen some of the reds I used the Mars Red over the Scarlet - this gives a nice rich colour

I allowed a little of the dark blue/green mix to bleed into the base of the flowers and a little of the flower colour to move down into the stem.
The first darkens the base to add form and the second ties stem and flower together.

Having developed the flowers, the background needed some attention - and I'm sorry I couldn't separate these stages as the work was too wet to scan!
I added more yellow in places - wet areas and dropped in pure yellow and encouraged it to run by tipping the board.

Then I added more dark in a similar manner - particularly next to the lighter yellow, always keeping in mind the textural effects of that background foliage.

I also added a little of the reds into wet areas to link flowers and background.

The green mix and the yellow completed the stems ..... overlaying a light colour on a dark gives some really good effects.

..... and this is the final result:



I hope this is of some help in understanding Acrylic Inks - there's more information in a Classroom thread I did a couple of years ago, which you will find here.