Alcohol Ink

About Desirée Delâge

Desirée Delâge lives and works as a creative artist in Cologne. She gave up her job as a visual designer four years ago and has been working in her studio on modern painting ever since. On her creative blog 'Krigelkragel' she writes about painting techniques and DIYs, gives tutorials and offers painting courses.

Artbookreview.net

Fluid art is, apparently, the hottest art trend since paint pouring. You can call me sceptical if you wish but I have to say that, on the basis of the results demonstrated here, I could be a convert.

Most books of this kind play heavily on serendipity and happy accidents, which I interpret as a lack of controllability and, just maybe, of ability on the part of the practitioner. Here, however, the emphasis is on control and making a very fluid medium conform to your intentions. Where other books that Ive seen tend to concentrate on abstracts and patterns, Desirée will show you how to prepare surfaces and manipulate the medium to create recognisable images mainly flowers and leaves that have what I can really only describe as an ethereal beauty I havent seen achieved with other media of this type.

As you would hope and expect, theres a good introduction to materials and working methods, particularly soaking and drifting, which is how you allow the ink to pool and then draw it out rather in the matter of a watercolour wash. Shell also show you how to work with brushes, colour shapers, droppers and swabs to create finer detail, as well as how to control when colours do or dont blend. As well as paper, Desirée works with wood, ceramics, glass and plastic to decorate a wide variety of objects.

This is a thorough, but also enjoyable and hugely practical introduction to what looks like a really rather rewarding medium.