Other teachers of art look on this maneuver of alcohol ink with contempt, since it by-passes half the grind they had been sweating years to achieve. you know that one,–controlled, careful, blending, patient, all that. Then one will use a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and apply it over ink, tip the paper, and this is how the piece is made. finished. Check this out for more information!

Whenever you have it the first time, the feeling is that you are almost committing a crime.

The deception is too absurd to be true: you brush and dab not ink, but leave it to evaporation and gravity. With a few drops of alcohol ink, or a spray of light or one drop of alcohol and the pigment, synthetic paper will begin to spread out in soft organic forms. No overthinking. No tight control. Just movement.

And that is the thing that irritates some teachers. It is not that you are building the work, in a traditional sense of the term, but that you are reacting to it.

And you can pass, and have it prettier than you used two hours of your life to paint.

It is that, this burglage of alcohol ink is instructing otherwise. You surrender in attempting to dominate the medium. You watch it. You adjust. Fold the piece of paper a little, brush paint away with a dry brush, maybe blow on the paper. It is nasty and that is nice. More like cooking without quantifying all.

I have witnessed novices scoring exceptionally well in few minutes. Not flawless, but living. That vacillatory, effeminate appearance men and women gain in old age? It just shows up.

Of course there is a hitch. It is not a method that will make you right. Clean edges, controlled gradients or realistic detail can be obtained, but you will bang on a wall fairly soon. The ink is its master, and sometimes he just wishes to make an ass of you. This is what completes the deal.

However in the case of backgrounds, abstract or even rapid color studies it is more or less addictive. You begin to experiment subconsciously. Alcohol concentration experiment. Apply ink on wet or dry spots. Observe the way colors drive each other.

At some point you have heard of some teachers who are irritated. It interferes with the usual learning pattern. You are already getting things, which are aesthetic things, which you have not merited, in the traditional sense.

Nonetheless, it does not render it wrong.

It only causes it to be different.

And a decent portion of fun as well.