Okay, I'm late to the party on this one, but alcohol is THE BOMB! The other day I decided to play around with some bottles of watercolor ink. They have lovely, vivid jewel tones and look nice on white watercolor paper. Then, out of curiosity, I tried putting drops of alcohol onto the wet surface. Wow! The alcohol moved the water and the ink right out of its way, forming plain white circles on the paper. This process is really hard to control, but chance can create very cool effects.
I had a stack of failed watercolor paintings nearby and decided to recycle this paper by using the back sides for further experimentation with the alcohol. Eventually I tried a multi-layered approach where I'd make an underlayer of gouache, cover it with black watercolor ink, and then draw into the wet black ink with a brush dipped in alcohol. The ink would part like the Red Sea on each stroke, revealing the colored gouache underneath.
After watching some online videos about using alcohol, I got some white Yupo and played around some more with ink and alcohol. This is addictive! My alcohol-based inks are supposed to arrive today, so that will be the next step.
