In which we combine science and art!

Well, not really. But that post I made earlier about how horribly wrong using Ecoline in combination with alcohol can go made me want to compare the three main types of colors I use: watercolor, ink and ecoline.

This is not a very scientific test since I only used one sample, didn't measure time and amounts and had slightly varied conditions but uh IS IT POSSIBLE I MISS BEING IN THE LABORATORY A LITTLE...

Pink shade: watercolor (Schmincke Horadam as cake to be exact. This only gives a rough estimate of how watercolor behaves since i found it does not only depend on the brand you are using or whether it comes in tubes or as cake, but also on the pigment itself. I have found that "earthlike tones" as sienna and umbra are usually more saturated with pigment and much more opaque than "artificial tones" such as phtalo blue)

Blue shade: Ecoline (liquid watercolor)

violet shade: waterproof ink (Rohrer und Klingner Zeichentusche)

paper: heavy watercolorpaper (300 mgs, I don't know what it would be in lbs sorry :c), coldpressed

(cut because this got kind of long)



First I wanted to compare the gradients you get when you drop the color into water (no blending, just observing how it spreads):

I don't know why I wrote "Tinte" instead of "Tusche". It was late I guess

As you can see, the watercolor spreads the best while the ink remains with the sharpest edges (creating some interesting patterns if you ask me). I guess this is due to the fact that drawing inks are usually not suspensions with water but based on acrylic resins which have been saponificated and are thus slightly hydrophobic*. The ecoline is kind of a compromise between those too, creating a sharp edge but with a gradient within.

What I did next is how "liftable" watercolor and ecoline are with water (I passed this test on the ink since I know it's waterproof). To do this I colored a field, let it dry thoroughly and then splattered some water on it. I waited a few seconds and lifted it with a cloth.

I kind of expected the ecoline to come off easier than the watercolor but seeing that ecoline is a solution and thus will stain the paper beneath it makes sense it happens this way. It's an interesting effect though since the color on the lifted area of the ecoline slightly differs from the unlifted part, whereas the watercolor just gets brighter.
At the edges of the Ecoline field you can also see that the color didn't stay in place but immediately flowed into the droplets I left.

To further test the "stability" of the color, I made some glazes. Again, I painted a field, waited for it to dry and then quickly layed down a glaze in a second color over it.

At 1 am I not only confuse Tinte and Tusche but also "lavieren" and "lasieren"

The ink doesn't care one bit as you can see, but it has some effect on the watercolor and the ecoline. On the watercolor it slightly scrubs off the old paint layer but you can see some of the pigments overlaying the first color, which creates an interesting effect. The ecoline however completely mixes (I used yellow and blue btw) and almost pushes away the first color. While this makes ecoline virtually useless for laying down shadows using glazes, I think this could come in handy for effects, since you can basically lay down drops of ecoline into a layer of it and instead of the colors adding (as it did with the ink) you will have spots that are basically "recolored". I will definitely try this sometime.

Lastly, I took a look at how alcohol influences the whole thing. I found that using alcohol on dried surfaces has almost no effect (not even on the ecoline), so these examples are done wet in wet (used a cotton swab to dap the alcohol in it):

Yeah, ecoline and alcohol don't work well together. It stains and secondarily, the effect is not very good. On watercolor and ink it works very well though. As I mentioned, ink is based on a different medium than watercolor so it does not surprise me that the effect of alcohol on it is so much stronger. Interesting though how different it looks! I guess the alcohol spreads much better in it since in the process of saponification, you get alcohol as well :>

On a side note I also checked if masking fluid can lift any of the dry color and it didn't, which is good to know.
Oh and I didn't include any tests on salt since I am currently looking for an alternative to that effect. Sure, it looks great but having saline solution on your painting is not the best for both your colors and your paper. Someone recommended an effect spray to me and I will go check that out.

I don't really know what to write as conclusion. I don't want to rank these since they obviously all have their strengths and weaknesses. If you want strong color while still using glazes, you should use watercolors and inks. If you want very smooth gradients or touch up some areas with color after you painted them already, you should go for ecoline.

SO YEAH these are my ramblings...I'm not sure if it is of interest for anyone, but I like comparing paints on this level to one another so maybe it was a good read for one or two people haha.

If you are interested, I could sometime make another article on watercolor effects! I think this is the most fun you can have with traditional media - creating textures.


*sorry if I add in these wild speculations, but I'm trying to think about why these observed effects happen aughhh