Experimentation: Quink + Bleach

I was recently shown a new technique that I wasn’t familiar with- using a type of ink called Quink in conjunction with household bleach.

Quink is a type of ink used in Parker pens. Frankly I was surprised people even buy ink for fancy pens anymore but there you go. When bleach is applied to Quink it quickly bleaches the ink, making it change colour. You can actually get a similar result just by adding water to Quink though the results don’t seem to be as strong.

Bleaching Black Quink gives you a rusty/gold kind of colour. Bleaching Blue Black gives a turquoise colour that I don’t particularly like. When using the bleach you can try to ‘stop’ the process by dabbing the bleached area with a dry paper towel. Stopping the bleach at the right time helps you control the tonal value of the bleached areas. If you don’t stop the bleaching process it can continue bleaching out the ink to a lighter value than you want. Unfortunately you can’t seem to fully stop the process in a stop bath which would probably just wash your entire drawing away. I’ve noticed that the gold colour of the bleached ink tends to brown after a few days so the process seems best suited to use for work that will be scanned into the computer soon after it has been created.

I doubt the longevity of the process considering you’re applying bleach directly to paper. I wouldn’t use the technique for work I wanted to last a 1000 years, but again it looks nice for work that will be scanned.

Here are some of the 20 odd experiments I did with the technique:

Not a bad little technique really. Because it’s so hard to control it gives you a nice unpredictable result.

Have a go with it yourself and drop a link in the comments for me so I can see what you came up with!

LM