I decided to do the line work with acrylic ink on this painting (using a brush). First time I’ve used ink and it went on like a dream – nice and opaque, flowed really well and gave me nice control over the lines. I will be using inks for outlines in future and fancy trying some colours other than black.

1. The blacks I use just aren’t opaque enough, so I can’t just lay the line down and forget about it – there’s a fair bit of touching up required.
2. The clogging on the brush can lead to mistakes on the lines. Because of the first point, it’s difficult to water the paint down enough so that this doesn’t happen as it then just loses all opaqueness.

I’m currently using Liquitex Soft Body ‘Ivory Black’ for my lines and have been for some time. It’s nearly what I want but still suffers from both of the above points (although it’s certainly the most opaque black I’ve used until now). But this morning I got thinking about the possibility of using acrylic inks, probably with a brush although maybe with a dip pen (haven’t used one before so I’m sure there’s a learning curve there). So any advice? Are inks the way to go for line work on paintings? Are they opaque enough? Should I use them with dip pens or stick to brushes? Questions, questions