Inky Fingers, I Mean Flowers

The flowers I used for Tuesday’s mixed media workshop are now in my studio, a splash of bright colour and cheerfulness.
I’ve “rewarded” myself with some “playtime” at the end of yesterday and today inspired by them involving watercolour, acrylic ink, fluid acrylics, and black ink. In theory these are applied to the 350g watercolour paper with a brush or pen, but somehow my fingers always seem to find their way in too.
Yesterday’s painting before I applied black ink:

The point at which I decided to stop:

Today’s painting before the black and a few bits of rigger brush colour:

The point at which I stopped today:

I like different things about each of these, and can’t decide if I like the one with more black ink the most or the more restrained use of black. Which do you prefer?

I also want try to create a version where I manage to leave some of the paper blank (white), but whether I will manage to remains to be seen. Who knows what tomorrow might bring.

14 Replies to “Inky Fingers, I Mean Flowers”

  1. Joyful paintings, Marion! Obviously you had fun with these, I love the results! ‘The point at which I decided to stop’ and ‘The point at which I stopped’ are my favourites. Gorgeous work, thank you for sharing.

    1. Thanks Susan! I think it’s near impossible to not feel joy faced with sunflowers and bright big blooms!

    1. It does help actually, as a motivator to do a lot more until I get (hopefully, maybe) to one where I like everything (ever the optimist!).

  2. I love the first one you did. Really vibrant and I think the use of ink really sets it off. Well done! Love the jug too, it’s the one I almost bought from Skyeworks!

    1. I’m glad you didn’t because it was the last big yellow jug and I finally gave into the temptation and bought it on Tuesday 🙂

      1. Can’t believe that you bought it! I was SO tempted every day but we have so many jugs at home I resisted! You were meant to have itx

  3. I like the one with more black ink. I just about wrote extreme ink; but, it’s not really that extreme. The black ink provides just the right amount of contrast.

  4. I’m probably a bit pro-black-ink biased, as I love using it myself, but given that: I prefer the black in ink treated picture. I think it’s partly because there are more colours of flower, making it brighter over all, which I tend to like, but I think too that the ink lines can be finer, which I prefer. I’d also like to draw your attention to two flowers in the one I like better – the top right pink flower and the centre foreground orange flower. The pink has no ink, which I think is great. It seems “back” in the painting and is flowing into the background without the delineation of ink. The orange is half inked, so you can see the lines of orange paint in the other half, which lightens it and allows it to… ‘breathe’? I like that in both there is a core where the black/dark seems to arise from and flow out to the flowers

  5. Hi Marion,
    I like the colours and the background you chose. I prefer the image with the most black ink, not because it delineates the flowers but because that bit of darkness seems to set them off.

  6. I like the one with more ink. It gives a more structured feel to the flowers. Possibly because I like more detailed rather than very loose work. Irrespective they look like fun and I find myself thinking about having a go.

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