Kamar Varnish on Alcohol Ink Tests
When I first started using alcohol inks, I wanted to protect them using varnish as I had seen others do online. However, I found pretty quickly that they seem to re-activate the ink in a lot of cases. Kamar Crylon varnish is seen as the gold standard for alcohol ink users, but even with this I have found it can make the ink run again, so here is my own test to see if this effects all inks, or specific ones (Spoiler, some inks don’t run).
I have captured all my findings on video if you want to watch, or if you prefere to read, then I have included all the information on this page.
Above are all the colours as they are applied with no varnish added to them at all so you can see how they should look.
Below are the colours with the Kamar vanish applied. I have also painted (Inked?) each colour twice, one I have labeled as concentrated, which just means I applied it thickly and did not move it around much with the airbrush, no additional alocohol was applied other than what was in the ink botttle already. The second instance of each colour I have labeled as diluted, which means I applied the ink and added some additional alcohol the thin them down. Some colours don’t seem to react when concentrated, but when diluted they will re-activate once varnish is applied.
The unvarnished colours did have some additional alcohol applied to them in the same way the diluted colours were, so these are probably the most helpful comparisons, although the fact that some inks do not react in a concentrated form is interesting.
Overall the most stable colours to use with Krylon Kamar varnish are: Currant, Blue Violet, Teal, Coral, Golden Yellow, Rainforrect Green, Blamco Blamco.
These colours are effected by the varnish but fairly minimally: Sangria, Indego, Passion Purple, Lime Green.
These colours I do not recoment using with varnish: Cranberry, Limeaide, Rust, Pitch Black.
I may update this list to include more colours as I experiment.
