Showerthought: A friend told me my ink mixes were 'muddy' and it changed my whole process

I mean, I used to just grab a couple of bottles that looked nice and mix them in a sample vial, maybe a 50/50 split. I thought I was making cool new colors, but a friend in the hobby looked at my swatch cards last year and said, 'Honestly, these all look kinda muddy.' She pointed out that I was mixing inks with totally different properties, like a super wet Pilot ink with a dry, dusty Noodler's one. The pigments or dyes were just fighting each other. So I started keeping a notebook, writing down not just the color names but the flow and dry time of each ink before I even think about mixing. Now I test tiny drops, like 90/10 ratios, and wait a full day to see if anything weird happens. It's slower, but my blues actually look blue now, not gray. Has anyone else had a simple piece of advice that made you stop and rebuild your method from the ground up?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_fisher286d ago

Oh man, that's so true.

the_sean5d ago

Right? Hits different every time.