Tsukineko Inks

After seeing the gentleman at the AQS Show in Syracuse demonstrate the Tsukineko Inks with a small dauber and stencils, I have wanted to try the inks again. I have used the inks for painting skies, and other things, but never stencils. He made it look so easy, especially fine delicate stencils. I used shaving cream as the medium for the inks, and a painter's dish with small convex cups. A foam core, plastic covered board is my work surface, on the dining room table.

First I dipped the foam dauber in the shaving cream, wiped it on the edge of the tray and dipped it in the ink. I was not getting good coverage and had to keep daubing the design. It is tricky getting just the right amount of ink on the dauber. It was too much in some areas, you can see the blotches, the stencil is a distressed pattern so maybe not the best one to start with. I moved on to the black fabric with silver metallic ink. I was still getting blotches and not good coverage with the daubing, so I decided to try swiping it. The lower part of the black fabric came out better, with the swipe technique.

I selected another stencil and green ink, and tried the swiping method. It worked better, as long as I did not get caught on the pointy parts of the stencil. Getting the lettering right with the blue ink was trickier.

Getting the very small detail on the lettering just right took some practice.

My most difficult stencil, it is delicate writing about art. I had tried it with acrylic paint and gave up quickly, it was just too small. The ink worked great, you can still see where I added more ink, but it is getting better. So I carefully daubed in the cream, wiped it on the edge of the tray, and did the same with the ink. Wiping the ink gave me more control over the coverage, and did not give me the blotches every time I started over.

My last piece is the best, I also used the foam dauber on the fabric as I cleaned off excess ink. I used one dauber for all the changes in ink color, just daubing it on paper to clean it, no washing in water. I also just wiped the stencil with tissue to clean it up. Tomorrow my friend Peggy is coming over and we are going to play. I want to try it on some hand dyed fabric, I also have a dandelion stencil I want to try, it is very delicate. Of course I am addicted to stencils and have bought a lot more recently. I think as background texture the blotchyness won't matter much, it is delicate, so I can't think it would be good as a main feature. I'll see how it works on chunkier stencils.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other textile artists were up to this week.