Liquitex Professional Acrylic Ink, Set of 6 x 30 ml Essential Colours

There is some argument as to what this product is. The company themselves refer to this as ink and paint, so what is it? Paint. Stick this into a fountain pen and try to write with it and you will wreck a perfectly good pen. It is not ink. It is very, very runny paint. So, enough of that hey? In general this is an excellent product. The pigment used in this and the other paints from Liquitex are good quality and hold their colour extremely well. The paint once applied dries quickly and is colourfast to a certain extent. It doesn't fade easily or quickly, which is what you would expect from a paint. Allowing that this is a very thin paint, it will soak in to absorbent surfaces, so using it on card or paper might require more care than canvas to prevent bleed through to other colours or distortion to the material used. As I didn't buy these for use in traditional art, I'll leave it there. My purpose for these paints is for use on models. Resin and plastic. The nature of these paints requires that you adopt a different technique when using them to paint - for instance - resin printed models. The liquid is very thin and spreads very easily. This means that you may need to use multiple coats to cover an area in the colour of choice. This is not so difficult to achieve. The paints are thin, translucent and apply very easily. Building up a colour layer is no more difficult than painting a surface, allowing it to dry and then painting over again with the same colour. Of course, it does require that you use a good quality acrylic primer first to coat the model for this paint to adhere properly to the material. You should avoid blobbing the paint onto a surface, and paint with even strokes in the same direction as much as possible. Thin coats at all times as the paint will build up into a strong colour covering the surface. The advantage of using thin translucent paint like this is that underlying details do not end up swamped by paint and filled or buried. It does however, mean that flaws and errors in painting will also be revealed. So, if you have a darker colour nearby that has spread over to an area where you wish to use a light colour, you will need to repair that with primer first before painting. One advantage to this, is that you can use priming to "pre-shadow" a model via what is commonly called 'Zenithal' - this is a simple process by which you coat the underside of a model with a darker coloured paint to create and overhead lighting effect. Too dark a coat and you will hide the colour you intend to use and the end result will simply look dull and uninteresting. So careful application and colour choice is essential to get the best here. This does mean however, that you can also use a dry-brush technique to pre-shade a model and then paint over that with this paint. Thereby achieving a shadowed effect on cloth folds or other details without the need for changing the tone and tint of the covering paint. Mixing this paint is essential, the pigment settles on the bottom of the bottle quite quickly separating from the carrying medium. So you may find you have to give the bottle a good shake every couple of minutes in order to maintain the colour. This applies to mixing the paints to make other colours as well. I find that a toothpick is more than adequate to agitate a pool of this paint if I combine them for other colours. The other thing to remember is to only use small amounts of this paint. Unless you are using a broad brush for broad strokes you will be wasting considerable amounts of paint. The dripper nozzle and rubber nipple work fine for most coarse purposes but it may be advisable if painting small areas, to simply use a drip from the pipette instead of using the nipple to suck paint into the applicator. These are rich, vibrant colours and provide excellent coverage, extremely good pigmentation and they mix easily to create different colours, tones and tints. This and other sets in the Liquitex range all supply the three primary colours - red, yellow and blue - from which the larger majority of other colours can be achieved. White and black allow you to change tone and tint for the paint creating new shades of your desired colour. It is important though that you are careful when mixing these paints. These can be used in an airbrush for large surface or primary coating purposes. Again, several layers are advised to get a strong colour and good finish to your paint work. They may need the addition of flow improver and airbrush thinner in order to facilitate use in an airbrush. This depends on the end result you wish to achieve, and the type of airbrush you are using. Also, it must be enforced, when using an airbrush with these paints you must wear a respirator. That applies to any other paint as well, do not make the mistake of thinking that because acrylics are water soluble that they are safe. No paint is safe to inhale. Always wear a respirator when using an airbrush. In summary, these are not cheap paints, the price is quite steep for what you get. But, they are excellent paints with a strong colour, vibrant results and a good colourfast result once dried. It takes a little bit of practice to get used to using these. Do not be put off by any initial results from the first coat which might not appear to have covered your subject. It has, but it might take more than one coat to show properly. Remember, these are pretty transparent when applied, so anything underneath will show through. In my opinion these are worth the money because they are high quality paints and work precisely as expected with excellent pigmentation and versatility. Your opinion may vary of course. I am not disappointed with this purchase, which arrived very quickly following ordering. They have already proven their value in my hobbies and I will get a great deal of use out of these.

Been wanting to try out inks to compliment my normal paints for my miniature painting, these were highly recommended by many people. After using them a few times I can understand why they were recommended so much. The colours are vivid and flow beautifully. The pigments are incredibly strong and work fantastically for tinting minis or creating glazes/washes. The black makes a great substitute for Nuln Oil and the Raw Umber works well for a deeper Agrax Earthshade after mixing them in with some water, Matt medium and flow improver. Shame it didn’t include a magenta colour. Picked one up myself so I can mix my own colours using CMYK, as the set does include blue, yellow, white, and black.

Very good quality inks, but some very odd decisions in what inks goes into the set. The set seems like it should be perfect for CMY(K) colour mixing. It includes the perfect pigments for cyan (Phthalocyanine Blue Green Shade) and yellow (Yellow Medium Azo), but instead of including magenta it includes a true red (Naphthol Crimson). This really limits the colour gamut that can be created an feels like a missed opportunity. The ideal magenta to add is "quinacridone magenta" which I bought separately. If you want to mix a true red you can just add 1 part M (quinacridone magenta) to 3 parts Y (Yellow Medium Azo), so I don't understand why they chose to include the read rather than magenta. It feels like a missed opportunity to make the perfect CMY(K) set, instead they opted for CRY(K) which really limits what is possible.

These are great inks to use. Us them a lot.

Liquitex does some of the best ink out there, these are great not just for air brushes but general brushes too. And when it comes to white they are only one of a few still adding enough titanium dioxide where you get perfect coverage and colour and dont need 10 coats and has a tinge when light hits it

Has now been used very successfully.

Great colour payoff, very pigmented and bright.

I needed a small amount of ink for a marbling project. I found that I had to thin the ink slightly to get a good float, but it is excellent ink and did exactly what I wanted.