Ink can be for much more then just drawing! Ink has a wonderful brilliant vibrance right out of the jar that can be used in many of the same ways as watercolor paint. One of the benefits however is that it's already in liquid form. In this post we'll use ink to create some nice washes and we'll use it with a traditional dip pen. We're working on a send-up of one of our favorite Rembrandt drawings on an Ampersand Aquabord Panel, which is an awesome wet media surface. It gives you all the benefits of working on paper without the buckling and warping.

We'll begin by brushing water onto the panel to assure some nice bleeding of color. Then we'll water down our inks and do some light washes, letting the color do whatever it wants.

Here we can see how the washes lend themselves ot the drawing that we are going to do on this panel. Using the organic shapes of the first washes we can determine the composition of our final drawing which you can see being laid in here with another yellow wash.

We'll use that second yellow wash as a guide for our drawing. The drawing is done with black ink and a Speedball Artists Pen Set. The wash helps speed up the drawing process and adds some richer color underneath the black lines of the pen.

Now that the drawing is complete, we'll go back in and do a much darker red wash to finish our composition and help the drawing stand out. Here is the final result....

So get out there and give it a shot, try drawing over some washes... Try doing the drawing first and using the ink washes to color your images. If you create something you like we'd love to see it! Send an image to learningcenter@utrecht.com.

There are a variety of alternatives to painting on canvas or paper. Many of the Old Masters painted on wood panels and today a variety of contemporary surfaces are available, offering unique opportunities to explore new ways of creating images. Ampersand has created a series of archival quality painting surfaces that are acid-free, non-yellowing and engineered not to warp or bow.

The Museum Series Panels include an unprimed hardbord that allows you to build up your own unique grounds and textures, and a ready to paint gessobord delicate enough for glazing but strong enough for pallette knife painting. Ampersand also offers the two types of panel used in this month's Learning Center on ink washes; claybord and aquabord.

Claybord is an incredibly smooth and absorbant kaolin clay-primed multi-media panel that accepts ink, gouache, acrylics, pencil and airbrush and makes a great surface for collage and photo transfers. The clay surface allows you to add thin layers of paint or ink then remove, reapply or even scratch through to create contrast and texture.

Aquabord is another acid-free clay surface that absorbs watercolor like a fine paper, but without any threat of shrinking, tearing or buckling. The surface offers the ability to lift color out with a wet brush or work in countless layers of color. Perfect for watercolor and gouache, but also a great option for encaustics or acrylics.

Ink on Ampersand Claybord

Mark Penxa is the artist behind the stunning internet exhibition "Stealing Signs: Dead-Ball Era Baseball Memories from My Last Life;1927". A beautiful collection of mixed media drawings of well known and unknown players from the golden years of baseball. A project that began as a gift to his grandfather and snowballed into one hundred pieces of art dedicated to America's Past time that can be enjoyed individually and as an entire body of work.

A native of Detroit,  Michigan, Penxa developed his style and aesthetic from the worlds of skateboarding and punk rock, earning his first freelance check from a skateboard company at 15 and touring with the punk band Telegraph for 8 years after high school. Mark has designed images for Girl Skateboards and is currently in the sketching phase of a snowboard design for DC Shoes. He brings great energy, an excellent eye for line and a do-it-yourself attitude to his work that makes you want to stop and look... and keep looking.

Over the next few months Mark will be working on a series of paintings tackling his home town and it's current political climate as well as curating a gallery show with friend Andy Jenkins about baseball and the art it has inspired.

Bellow are are small sampling of the works in "Stealing Signs" as well as a few other of Mark's drawings and paintings, enjoy.

Mixed Media painting and  few sketchbook images...

"None of us were able to choose whether to be an artist or not and you can't learn how to be one but, you can always learn how to be a better one and we should. Constantly. There's a certain amount of responsibility that comes with all of this. It doesn't matter how you maintain it, just that you do." - Mark Penxa

Visit Mark's Website