Self portrait

One of my favourite things about working with inks is getting to experiment with different surfaces.  Of course, whatever goes under the ink affects how it’s taken up, making for a very different inking experience.

Gouache makes for a nice and smooth inking surface once it’s dry, which makes certain things like feathering easier (I admit, I still don’t know how to do it ‘properly’).  The smooth surface catches all of the tiny variations in line-width in a way that the regular paper I was using did not.  I liken the feeling of inking on this surface to picking up an object that you assumed was far heavier; the object seems to jump right into your hand, or have an energy of its own.