Zentangle play with Acrylic Ink

This is a little tutorial about combining Zentangle with some acrylic ink art.  I hope you enjoy it.  

Ingredients:

Starting out with "a few" colours of acrylic ink.

Heavy weight watercolour paper

Motlow Grafx Art Masking Liquid Pen

Circle Templates ... You can repurpose any round item to use

Straws

 

Method:  take your circle template and draw circles onto the paper with the Motlow marker.

 

Make sure to wipe your templates with some paper towel before the medium dries, although it will rub off when dry it is easier to do it now.

  

Mix a few drops of each colour liquid acrylic ink with water. I have used twelve colours to signify the colour wheel.

Place a small amount of colour in the centre of the page and blow gently with the straw.  The ink will go in whatever direction you blow air through the straw onto it. Make sure to take regular breaks from blowing through the straw as you may get lightheaded if you do too much at once.

You can see I have done each of my colours from the centre outwards.    I have also used up left over ink on another piece of paper to play with another time. 

When the ink has thoroughly dried, you can rub off the Motlow resist to reveal the clean white paper underneath.  Use a soft eraser or even your clean finger to softly rub the blue resist off the paper.

And the big reveal ... Doesn't it look great.

Now for the Zentangle part.   I am going to use Zentangle patterns to fill in some spaces.

My pattern books are available to purchase and download as a PDF at www.janemonkstudio.com

Tangling with Staedtler Triplus Fineliners and matching up the coloured pen with the inks as best I can. 

You could use a calligraphy pen and use the liquid acrylic inks, but the pens were easier and less fiddly for this tutorial.

Still a little way to go until I finish this piece but I think you get the idea. It was a lot of fun and would be a great project to do with children.  I would think you could use food dyes to the same effect.

Have fun and let me know if you try it.   

Keep making art until next time ... Jane x