Distress Inks

The world is changing. Today marks a historical date, one that we will not forget too soon for better or worse. Since change seems inevitable, I thought I'd do something different (for a change), to mark the date. 

This all started because I was annoyed.

As you might know, I've been playing with color using my watercolors and Caran D'ache Neocolor crayons, and loving the painterly look. However, what got me annoyed is that they seem to leave some strong residue on the paper which makes it difficult to tangle AFTER painting. 

I figured that I would try to paint using distress and dylusion inks, which as far as I could remember applied on clean and left no residue. 

So started with a regular tile and string, and used the distress inks as watercolors to paint on the different sections of the string. 

I was holding a super thin brush, and I figured, Ah, what the hell, let me tangle with this, ton sur ton.  Since this was a completely new experience, I used my favorite comfort tangles, Crescent Moon, Baton, Printemps and Florz. 

I LOVE THIS!!!! I proceeded to continue to tangle using the brush, and a few of the distress ink brush markers I had. 

The final touch (at least I thought so) was to add white pencil and white gel pen. NO INKING PEN! NO MARKERS! NO GRAPHITE! 

Here is the tile in my 3-ring binder journal:

After a couple of hours, I came back to it and used the thin side of the distress marker to add more details. I like it better, it looks more finished:

The interesting to me is that, although it has shading, I wasn't really concerned in making the sections 3-dimensional. I just wanted a distressed, watercolor feel. 

This was a very fun experience, and I think I'll try another one! (By the way, look at the size of that tiny brush, it's a 20/0 spotter. Whew! 

Copyright 2017 Eni Oken