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Embellishing with Derwent Inktense Pencils

Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Messages
31
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Location
Kenmore, WA
Inktense pencils by Derwent deposit a pigment based ink on whatever surface you are working with. My primary medium is wood so I have been learning to use inktense pencils for my pierced wood projects. You can see some of these at studiojoec.com.
Anyway, Inktense is mostly water resistant on cotton watercolor paper but not so much on wood. I usually overcome this by putting a top coat of water based polyurethane over my work when it is dry. I need to use several light coats of poly with an airbrush to do this without smearing the pigments.
The usual method of using inkense pencils requires wetting the pigments with a water on a brush to set the pigment into the pores. I just tried an experiment of skipping the water setting step and jumping directly to setting the pigment with water based polyurethane.
It actually works quite well. The pigments disolve and set into the wood pores quickly. However, working time of the pigment setting phase is drastically reduced. If you are blending pigments on the workpiece, you have about one minute before the pigments get fixed in place.
I plan to try this method on the next few pieces I make since it saves a lot of time.
Does anybody else have experience with inktense on wood with or without water based poly?
 
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