Yesterday I shared the first part of the Watercolor Paper Comparison - telling you a little bit about the different types of watercolor paper and the brands and types of paper I would be comparing. I also shared links on where to find these papers, sizes, weights and the all important prices! Several people asked about buying the large size sheets. Dick Blick has a 6 sheet minimum (any brand) to mail the watercolor paper sheets but it wasn't bad shipping - $13.95 - that was for a huge flat box for the watercolor paper and a smaller box containing all of the pads, cards and other types of paper I ordered at the same time. Quite a bargain IMO.
On to today's comparison....
Today I wanted to share how various types of inks preformed on the different types of watercolor papers. I am going to be using some of the most popular and/or requested black inks (in alpha order): Archival Ink; Hero Arts; Memento; My Favorite Things, StazOn, VersaFine.
For this test I tamped the stamp (Just For Fun Rubber Stamps - Fruit Cube) on each ink pad 3 times to ensure that it was completely covered. You'll see that some of the pads are softer than others and I got ink on the insides of the pear - oops! Anyway, ignore that ;) Some inks transferred well onto the papers while others not so much. I did notice that some of the inks seemed to soak in and spread a bit causing the loss of really fine details (Archival & Hero Arts) while others did not. I was surprised to see that the very best ink that did the best on all papers was the StazOn Midi! I hadn't really used it for watercolor papers before - I mainly used it for slick non-porous surfaces. Silly me...it works great on watercolor papers too! VersaFine also did very well but it seemed to fade a bit on some of the watercolor papers. Hero Arts ink did very well on the Hero Arts paper. To really see the differences you may want to click on each photo to enlarge it.
Note, all of the inks were stamped in the same order... bottom row - L-R Archival Ink, Hero Arts, Memento; top row - L-R - My Favorite Things, StazOn and VersaFine. The watercolor paper brand/type and weight is listed below the images.
So what are your thoughts?
Any surprises?
Tomorrow is Club Scrap Blog Hop day
so I'll have the next installment for you on Thursday.
Thanks so much for doing this comparison! I knew the Staz-On would work well but was surprised that the Archival did not work equally well. The other big surprise was that, at least on my screen, the Crayola seemed to work fairly well, LOL. Thanks again and I can't wait to see how the other experiments go!
ReplyDeleteI am disappointed Archival Ink did not meet the quality of Staz-on since it is my go-to for watercoloring. Did I miss a test to show how these inks hold up to water? My experience is that Memento bleeds when misted but don't know about the others.
ReplyDeleteArches cold press paper is available locally on racks in the fine arts sections of JoAnns and Michael's.