EXCITING NEW TECHNIQUE!!!

I found a very interesting book at the library called "Painting without a Brush" by David Ferry. Printed in 1991, it is still available on line. In fact, I had to pay as much for postage as for the book! The library is a very expensive place for me. When I find a book I like, I want to own it. This book has lots of interesting mixed media ideas. Today I decided to try one that really intrigued me. The idea is to use bleach to lift areas of ink. Above is the final result. Here is the process I followed:
First I drew the image with charcoal onto a sheet of smooth watercolor paper. Next, I took a white candle and drew some lines that will act as a resist. Then I took some non-permanent black ink (permanent ink has shellac in it and won't work) and brushed the ink over the paper, leaving some of the area white. When that dried, I then used various brushes and applied bleach. Be sure you have decent ventilation as the bleach odor can be fairly strong. The bleached area turned shades of orange. I want to explore different strengths of ink and different dilutions of bleach to see how much variation I can achieve. When the paper dried, I applied more charcoal, then sprayed with an acrylic fixative. Lastly, I glazed some acrylic color over areas and used titanium white acrylic from the tube for more opaque passages.

This was so much fun, I can't wait to try it again tomorrow. Now that I have the idea, there are some variations I want to try.