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Watercolour paper + inking = ??

So, I'm working on a big piece at the moment which is intented for my portfolio for this art program at university. It's kind of a fake book cover design, and it's slightly almost art-nouveau-ish (though I don't really know much about the style) ... so it needs some nice outlineage.

I am thinking of inking it somehow. But it's on watercolour paper (I plan to use watercolour and maybe pencil crayon for the colouring) ... and I'm terrified that any sort of felt tip pen such as a micron will bleed and make it fuzzy and messy, and I don't know how India ink is meant to go on watercolour paper ... it's that textured slightly bumpy style of watercolour paper.

I am also considering ballpoint pen. =) But! I have never done this technique before (sad I know) ... so I'm wondering if anyone has experience with watercolour paper and what sorts of inks/outlining work well on it, without bleeding or spidering off into the little bumps in the paper and stuff ... my general plan is to ink/outline it first, then go in on top of that with watercolour.

OR, would it be better to colour it first then ink? I don't know...

Any tips?

In my experience pens like microns won't bleed into watercolour paper, wc paper isn't really designed to be bleedy otherwise you couldn't control the flow of the paint and water very well. It should be fine, and it will look a lot nicer than biro, biro tends to leave behind a sort of dark green shiny ink whereas microns are pitch black.

If you're still not confident, try to find an off-cut of the watercolour paper you're using that you can experiment on, doing this is usually a good idea for while you're painting, too, so you can test colours before you put them on your real piece.

for Art Nouveau look I highly recommend you just grab a book from the library about the art movement. Otherwise your watercolor piece will look a little too fake instead of being influenced by that art style. Remember, you're going to be showing this to art professors who are well aware of all art movements. This right here will show them that you know how to do your art research, very important for when you do your art projects in school.

Okay, onwards to the technical question. I recommend waterproof SpeedBall ink. Its very VERY black and it wont bleed especially since you're using watercolor paper. Try to get the paper stock that is about 140 LB instead of a lighter weight. You want your piece to be able to lay flat after you've drenched it with your paints:) Cheaper papers will have a tendency to curl hardcore. Arches paper works well too or printmaking paper.

To get some interesting line art, try dip pens. You can get these at a variety of sizes and it'll create an interesting lineart.

It is usually advised to do your drawing in pencil first, then color and then ink. But if you're to use a very black ink and you're not using very opac watercolors, you could most likely get away with just inking first and then coloring in the lines. I hope this helped some.

I use Micron pens on Arches watercolor paper all the time -- they don't bleed even when applied to paper that is not fully dry yet. I pencil first, then color, then ink after everything has dried thoroughly.

Remember to stretch your paper beforehand or it will inevitably buckle and be annoying to work with. This page explains the how and why of stretching: http://painting.about.com/cs/watercolours/ht/Howto_WCstretch.htm

Good luck with your portfolio!

Okay, so Microns sound like they will work fine. Thanks all! =)

Oh yes, about the Art Nouveau thing ... I guess I worded that wrong, what I meant to say was that I wasn't really thinking about the style at the time of making it, but when I finished the outline I noticed it seemed to have some elements of the style in it (from what I've seen of Nouveau stuff, anyway). Hmm. I never thought of that though ... do you think it would be bad if it has some of the same elements without researching it? I guess it was more of a coincidence, as I wasn't really going for any Art Nouveau thing. It just seemed to happen :(

Well, if'n you want you can have a gander at it in my sketchbook thread, I've just posted a (bad) photo of the piece so far. =) I would appreciate any input on it too!

Thanks again! And if anyone else wants to say anything more, please speak up ... :D I haven't started inking yet, haha.

Loba said:

I use Micron pens on Arches watercolor paper all the time -- they don't bleed even when applied to paper that is not fully dry yet. I pencil first, then color, then ink after everything has dried thoroughly.

Remember to stretch your paper beforehand or it will inevitably buckle and be annoying to work with. This page explains the how and why of stretching: http://painting.about.com/cs/watercolours/ht/Howto_WCstretch.htm>

Good luck with your portfolio!

Any kind of tape that will stick on wet surfaces will work. Personally I use staples and a big piece of foam core.

Because ink and paint are easy to screw up, I might advise scanning in your penciled image (though I think you've already done that). Then if you mess up somewhere, you can print out your sketch, place some graphite paper under it, and trace it onto a new watercolor page. And actually...because I think the inking will be more difficult than the painting, I might do the ink first, as it would be more frustrating to redo the entire watercolor job if you mess up afterwards on the ink than it would be to redo the ink and get it right before putting in the color. But that's just me, really - more tentative when it comes to such projects that involve so many straight perfect lines...

A note about Microns, I know a bit ago they changed their formula of their ink to one that is slightly water soluble. I found this out the hard way when I normally was able to use water based paint (gouache, watercolor etc) with the microns but suddenly they would get slightly blurry or smudge a bit more, even when erasing.

Copic pens have proven to be very good and also come in the sizes Microns do. But yes I've used Microns and Copics on watercolor paper and other thick stocks and haven't had any sort of problems with bleeding into the paper.

Thanks Vizon! I actually did the first copy on a big sheet of regular drawing paper, and then used carbon paper to transfer it to watercolour paper, so I do have the original copy if I screw up the watercolour badly. :P Good advice though. And as for the inking, heh, that'll be the easy part ... I can usually do straight lines and inking stuff on the first try, that's one thing I AM good at! XD

And thanks Thornwolf too. Yah, I did hear that about Microns. Worrisome! But I guess it might be okay if I'm inking it last, and it's all dry and stuff by the time I go in with the pens, eh?

Oh and also thanks Loba for the stretching thing! I've never had a problem with buckling watercolour paper before ... but it wouldn't hurt to stretch it first just in case I suppose. So thank you =)

Vizon said:

Because ink and paint are easy to screw up, I might advise scanning in your penciled image (though I think you've already done that). Then if you mess up somewhere, you can print out your sketch, place some graphite paper under it, and trace it onto a new watercolor page. And actually...because I think the inking will be more difficult than the painting, I might do the ink first, as it would be more frustrating to redo the entire watercolor job if you mess up afterwards on the ink than it would be to redo the ink and get it right before putting in the color. But that's just me, really - more tentative when it comes to such projects that involve so many straight perfect lines...

you could also just print this back out on watercolor paper and retrace the lineart with the ink pen:)