 Well, hi there, it's Sandy Olnok, and today I'm going to be testing blending solutions for alcohol apes. I recently heard about denatured alcohol, and I wanted to try it, and I also noticed that isopropyl is starting to show up in stores more after a year of a pandemic, so I thought I would try them out and test them all apples to apples. And I set up my workspace with an extra large piece of freezer paper because I also was going to be shooting a new class. It's a terrestrial alcohol ink class, and at the end of this particular video, I will include the promo for that so you can see a sneak peek at what's in the class, the kind of things that you'll learn. And yes, I am wearing PJ bottoms along with a sweater in the filming of this video because I was not thinking very clearly. I put a little of each of the solutions in a bottle, except for the ranger, which I kept in its bottle, but I didn't want all these big jars sitting around on my desk, so I have little tiny jars with them. They're all labeled, so I know what's in each one. And then I did the safety thing. If you are working inside, you want to make sure that you wear a mask or have a window open, and in either case, have a fan on and take lots of breaks because this stuff is not good for your lungs. If you ever notice you're getting a headache, take a break and really fan out the room while air it out and go back another time to do more work. So I'm starting out with the 70% alcohol solution, which is the lowest percentage of alcohol. And on all of these, I'm going to use about the same amount of liquid on each one, and I'm going to use the same number of drops, just three drops on each one, and let them air dry. I wanted to have some kind of a technique that would be apples to apples on everything so that I could get a sense of what the differences are between each of these. I've used all of them, well, except the denatured alcohol, which I had just gotten, but I've used all of them in different sessions when I've been doing my painting and hadn't really done a straight up test. This seemed like a good one to do with using this gravity technique, which just uses gravity and air, the air in the room, not using any blowy tools or air brush or anything else, because I've had a lot of people who want to do my ethereal alcohol type of beautiful paintings, but they don't want to get a hair dryer. They don't want to get a compressor and an airbrush, that kind of thing. So this is one way you can get some of that look without actually having all of those tools. Lots of people do alcohol ink by just dropping it on the page, but there's something to me about the way that alcohol ink does beautiful, swoopy shapes and gets elegant edges that I like to exploit in the medium, as opposed to just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, there's nothing wrong with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I use some of the blah, blah, blah in my new textured alcohol ink class, but there's also so many more things that you can do with alcohol inks. And it's just a matter of how it's applied and how you use the moist versus dry portions of the paper, and that's what I'm doing here. This one with the 70% alcohol took 27 minutes for it to dry. And I had to take several breaks. I went let the dogs out. I went and got the mail and stuff. 27 minutes is a long time for this thing to air dry. And one of the connections I made in my brain was that UPO also takes forever to dry when you've got something with water in it. When I'm watercoloring on UPO, it drives me nuts. So 70% alcohol, guess what, has water in it. That's why it takes so long to dry. It also tries to separate some of the little pigment things in the alcohol ink. And if you're using it in more than just this kind of a really simple application, you can actually get granulated pigments in there. You'll get little chunks of pigments breaking up. And it can look really ugly if it does. You could also use that to exploit it in a particular way to get some really interesting textures. So don't dismiss it just because it doesn't do what you expect in one way. You can exploit that technique else wise. Well, trying to use gravity to create edges here was not the most successful thing in the world. I didn't get it to create a few little swoops in there. But it was not my most successful technique. But I did make a card out of it nonetheless. Because with any of this kind of stuff, you're just making a beautiful background for cards. These kinds of pieces, even if they don't look amazing and incredible, can be really beautiful. So next up is going to be the 91%. And as opposed to the 27-minute waiting time for the 70% alcohol, this one only took nine minutes and 51 seconds. So 10 minutes versus 27. So the water content in this is a lot less. I also got a lot more of the swoopy type of texture to the alcohol as it moved across the page. So it gives you a more elegant and beautiful look in that way as well. But I still was struggling with the I wanted to use my airbrush really badly and move the color deliberately to where I wanted it, because I can do different things with it when I blow it around. But for the test, I went through it and sat here for nine minutes and 51 seconds, trying to see if I could create edges. Now, when you're using this gravity technique, so I have this fancy name for it, what you want to do is watch where the dry areas are. And you can see the color change as it dries. So you'll start to notice with this particular color, there's some areas that turn purple instead of the pink of the wet liquid. And so as it moves around on the paper and you start seeing that color drying up, and then there's like my left hand, you can see my fingers are underneath the paper. It seems to actually be drying underneath of the paper. It's like putting some heat there. So maybe that is a technique that you could use to create some spots is to put your fingers underneath the paper. But I decided I didn't want those spots there because that was just kind of funky to have my little fingerprints on the bottom corner. And I eventually ended up letting that alcohol take over that corner entirely so that I could remove it with a lot of these solutions. They will lift the color that's underneath of them. And that's what I ended up deciding to do with this one is letting that color, excuse me, lift up and just cover that area entirely because I got tired of the mess down there. And then I just challenged myself to see if I could have this bottom section, this whole bottom right section, become a very smooth, simple type of shape rather than trying to create a lot of shapes in it and let that streak that's across the design carry more of the detail. It's really nice that even for a simple background like this with just one color and not a whole lot of detail in it, I can still make a nice card because if you put it on a card base and layer it up and put a nice sentiment on it, it really draws attention to the sentiment. And I've stamped these, by the way, in VersaFine Onyx Black and it works really well, stamping that on this when they're done on the backside of the paper. So next up is the 99%. And this is one that was bought in the hygiene section. So for makeup and that kind of thing is the purpose of it. It's in a pink bottle. So I think they think it'll appeal to girls because it's pink. And I don't know that there's really a whole lot of difference between a lot of the 99%. I do have a second 99% I'll be testing next, but I think they're all about the same. This one took seven minutes and 36 seconds to dry. Remember the first one, the 70% was 27 minutes. The next one, the 91% was a 10 minute drying time and this is seven and a half. So obviously the less water that's in it, the faster it dries. So the water is apparently what keeps it going. So another thing to think about with water is those who use a straw to try to blow things. And of course, be careful when you're inhaling and that sort of thing, because that would be dangerous. If you're doing any blowing with your breath for these, then you might be spitting even just tiny aerosolized droplets and you may be adding moisture to your paper which could add granulation. So it might make your pigments break up. So if you have that problem, which I did at one point, then be aware of that, that it could be your own breath that's causing that. So I was gonna try to see if I could create a shape in the middle of the paper and leave some white on the top and bottom and it kept growing. So when you're doing this, if you're trying to leave some white areas which I think makes it look more ethereal, then if you aren't careful and you aren't paying attention that you'll easily take over the whole piece of paper because the alcohol wants to keep moving as long as it's wet. It's not like watercolor paper which will only move into wet areas. The wet areas will want to continually expand. So use gravity to your best advantage. So if you want to move color and erase an area, then let all of the color wash right over it. So I was gonna try to see if I could make a nice big simple area and could I get it to be really flat and keep just that texture in that right hand corner where my thumb is. Maybe this could look like a mountain landscape or something in the sky at the top. So there's another one of my finished cards with the same sentiment once again and layers of paper on the card base. This is another 99% but I didn't find it to be any different really in terms of performance than the other one. This one just happens to be a medical 99% isopropyl alcohol. So it was sold as a medical supply and I wanted to see if that had any difference. Was it to a different purity or something that might affect the alcoholic? It didn't really seem to matter at all. And I've used all of these for a couple other pieces by the time I'm doing this voiceover. So I have tested it in more than just this one particular small instance and I didn't find it to be any different. It was more expensive but because it comes in a big, big, big, big, big bottle it was really huge. So there's gonna be links to all of these in the doobly-do so you can see brand names and ounce sizes and all that kind of stuff. And then a lot of it though you could just get at your local store. You can get them at your drug store or your hardware store or that kind of thing lots of different places that you can get these but I'll link them up anyway. This one, the time difference was barely anything. It was 722 instead of 736 for the other 99%. But I decided since I wasn't able to keep those two areas the top and bottom on the last one, white that I would see if I could do that on this one. And so I did. I kept rolling it around and just being focused on exactly where I was letting that color run to and not letting it take over. That sort of seemed to be the trick to this for me was not letting it run me but letting me run it, letting me be in control of it. And just so you know, you can also do this with multiple colors. What I would recommend would be to do a section like this in one color, get it completely dry and then do just that section on the right like if you want that white section to be a yellow then put a yellow in there and start to work on that section. So you can get multiple colors on these with the gravity method without having to do anything crazy. Just do them one section at a time because if they're wet and they touch each other they'll start to move into each other, et cetera. But just let it dry completely before moving on to the next one. So the last of the ones that are in the little bottles is the denatured alcohol. And this one took only two minutes and 36 seconds to dry. Two minutes and 36 seconds. That is compared with the whole seven minutes of the 99%. So this one apparently has even less water in it, whatever that means. I don't know what's in it but the fact that it says fuel on the can scares me. So even though I kind of like it and I like the way that it does this really swooshy thing it also gave me really feathered edges I just, I don't know. The idea of using fuel in my studio is a little scary. So I may continue using this sometimes. I don't really know. And I have not experimented with this a ton because this was the one that I purchased and only tried just before making this video and shooting the class. So take that with whatever it is. I got this at a hardware store. So you can get it at lots of different places in your community. And it was really easy to get this super soft edge. So look at that, isn't that amazing? No blowy tools involved. And this is all just real time. Let you watch the color move around and dry. And it worked really, really well. So that was a little bit of a surprise to me. I was not expecting it but you can decide whether or not you wanna have something called fuel in your studio. Be really careful where you store that as well. Read all the directions on the can. Don't store it in anywhere that's gonna be too hot or too cold. And I definitely recommend only having a little jar of it open at a time. You certainly wouldn't wanna have that big can on your desk anyway. Just put it in a little jar if you're gonna use some of that. So there is the card for this one. The last one is the Ranger solution. And the reason I save this for last is because I don't know what's in it. I don't know what the percentage is of isopropyl that's in it. It doesn't say on the jar. And I didn't dive in deep. There might be some article on the web somewhere that says how much is in it. But the interesting thing about this is it reacts differently with the color. It's a four minute and 52 dry time. So it's slower than was the denatured alcohol. But it kind of brightens the color. I was not particularly aware that it did that. I don't know why. I probably should have figured that out from Tim. He's gonna have a product that's going to brighten the color. I don't really worry too much about the bright color. For me, it's a little more about the composition and the shape than having the color be screamy bright. But if you were into screaming bright colors, then the Ranger solution is gonna be a great one. So there's that. In the classes that I teach, the multi-alcoholic classes, you can use any one of these. I don't care which one you use. Whatever one you like the best, go for it. But you can see as it's drying, I can sort of tip the paper in different directions and get those little striations to appear. So it's trying to see how long would it take for them to stay in place. As it dries, then some of those lines will start to stick and they disappeared really quickly. The more different directions you turn it, the more you can smooth that out. And then I finally let gravity do the last bit of it and was really delightfully surprised at the color change that I get in there, in that top area. Look how beautiful that is. I wasn't expecting to see an almost yellowy color in there. So kind of amazing. It is a more expensive one, I think, than isopropyl alcohols, but if you like a really bright color, that might be a good one for you. And now for what you've been waiting for, here's the promo for the new class. The terrestrial alcohol ink jumpstart class at art-classes.com is the sister of the ethereal alcohol ink jumpstart. But with double the lessons and only three colors, primary colors of yellow, red, and blue. Ethereal art is soft and airy, but terrestrial is grounded in texture and contrast with many of the art pieces looking like topo maps, overhead topography maps of the earth. Card-making students will be thrilled to have beautiful new ideas for card-making backgrounds, but we'll move quickly to larger format papers as well to create fine art alcohol ink paintings. We'll use photopapers, UPO, and other plastic papers, shaped paper, and a toe dipped into working with ceramic tile. An airbrush is used for some of the spray techniques, but mini-mistures with ink in them will also be used for alternate techniques for those without a compressor. See the free pre-class lesson for more information on supplies and then pack up for an adventure into terrestrial alcohol ink. Link to the class is in the doobly-doo if you find this interesting. Thank you for watching my video today, and if you haven't subscribed, please do. Click that like button, and I'll see you again in a couple of days. Bye-bye.