I have always been inspired by artists that create lovely loose pieces of work especially in water based media.

Ann Blockley has been one of my favourite artists that I have followed and loved for many years, but try as I may I have never been able to produce such lovely free flowing pieces of work without ending up getting out the small paint brushes!

So in an attempt to try and loosen up my style, I embarked on expermenting with mixing different media on different surfaces.

I had been using Pastelmat for my wildlife paintings, but wondered if it was possible to use with wet media.  At first I tried standard tube watercolour.  Whilst I was pleased with how the watercolour reacted with the sanded surface, I was disappointed with the colour intensity so looked at my art supplies and considered what other media I had to experiment with.  I had acrylic inks, fluid watecolour and some bombay indian inks and experimented with them in turn.

To my excitement, I found that Indian Inks not only reacted brilliantly with the sanded surface, but they have a unique way of reacting with each other dependent on what pigments you use.  So my aim was to create a piece of work that was loose in style compared to my normal work and something to build on with future work.  So this is the outcome of my experimenting and trying something that I would never have done before.  If you are interested in purchasing this piece of artwork visit my website jackiekirbyart.com.  If you are interested in trying using bombay inks and want to know the steps I took to produce this, get in touch I would love to share!