51: Inkcited – Fountain pen ink art with Nick Stewart

An episode featuring artist Nick Stewart. It’s all about making art using the unique properties of fountain pen inks. Shading, sheening, chromatography, and bleach. Also, how we plan to get involved in Inktober 2018.

Nick Stewart is a professional artist and graphic designer whose work you will find on things from album covers for well-known musicians to household products on supermarket shelves. However, we are focusing on Nick’s personal project to develop art using fountain pen inks and bleach.

We recommend browsing Nick’s project website before listening to the interview. The questions and answers will make more sense when you are familiar with Nick’s artwork and blog.

Using fountain pen inks as an art supply is a relatively recent development, initially pushed by the urban sketching community. This has led to the development of new waterproof inks by fountain pen ink manufacturers. Until recent years mostly shellac and acrylic based inks were used by artists.

Nick’s experiments with chromatography and bleach however take fountain pen ink art to exciting new places and open up new possibilities, even for artists already working with ink.

Nick also reveals some interesting experiences he has had teaching excluded children — children removed from normal schooling due to behavioural and other issues. Despite all warnings, the students were really engaged and produced lovely results. Nick discusses why, and how the most unlikely students respond to art in this way.

##Topics