I’ve had a set of acrylic inks sitting around since I was at Art Center. They were from one of my early classes, probably in the first three semesters, and I think at the time when I got them, I had basically no idea what the heck I was doing with them. I remember I probably used them too think and treated them more like actual acrylics rather than ink… Which of course does not have to be super opaque, though I’m pretty sure that’s something I trend towards with traditional media in general — The times I’ve used gouache, I haven’t thinned it out at all really, even if it maybe would be more appropriate to do so. Still wish that I’d been able to take one of the courses that were actually gouache-based but that’s another medium for another set of experimentation later on, not now. As it is, this was my random medium of choice for the moment, so onward to art!
Anyway, here’s the first image I did.
I only kind of remembered how to work with these inks, so unsurprisingly, much could be improved. I also didn’t have a character in mind that I was depicting… More just some random just because I needed something other than a blank page to paint.
Final pass through it I grabbed my colored pencils and added a bit of detail, cleaned things up and the like to put a bit of a finish on it. It was a good learning experience.
Next pass I went through and actually picked a character, Arla, and I think overall it was a much more successful image. I experimented a bit more with laying in a solid color across the whole thing first to unify it — which I kind of did at the end of the previous image, so I just did so in a more logical fashion.
I’m really hoping to go and work more with the inks in the future, I have some ideas for what I want to do, just gotta get a little bit of time set aside to do so. No problem!
I still want to know what Darzanth was going to be — I think I wonder this every time I categorize something as a personal project. I guess at some point I’ll have to either find my notes or make something up to take that name.