{"id":9105,"date":"2020-01-27T10:55:38","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T10:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=9105"},"modified":"2020-01-27T10:55:39","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T10:55:39","slug":"experiments-with-acrylic-ink-and-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/experiments-with-acrylic-ink-and-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Experiments with Acrylic Ink and Water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ink in Water\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/387402151?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The other day I was drinking a cup of tea in one of those caf\u00e9s where they provide the hot water, tea bag and milk separately. I let the tea brew before stirring the milk in and was entranced by the smokey effect of the milk being stirred into the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I went to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houseofillustration.org.uk\/\">The House of Illustration<\/a> for the final weekend of their Designed in Cuba collection of communist posters. Most of these posters were drawn, but in a video interview with one artist he mentioned portraying a nuclear bomb mushroom cloud by taking a picture of &#8216;Chinese Ink&#8217; added to water and then inverting the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Together, I thought this might be fun as a video experiment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A bit of googling suggested that acrylic ink and water worked best. A few YouTube videos suggested buying or making an aquarium was the best way forward. But they cost money, and I wanted to do something quickly and easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In MUJI, I found a nice <a href=\"https:\/\/www.muji.eu\/pages\/online.asp?Sec=9&amp;Sub=39&amp;PID=11054&amp;qclr=4550002855901\">acrylic plastic box<\/a>. Some paints were cheaply acquired from Amazon, and I bought a few plastic bits and pieces to try to control the paint at my local discount shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I lit the box from above and to the side, placing it on some white board, with more white board behind the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first attempts didn&#8217;t go as well as hoped when I realised <em>afterwards<\/em> that I had <em>not<\/em> set my camera to 100 fps (to slow the footage down), but had inadvertently left it on 25 fps, which meant I couldn&#8217;t slow the footage down. Frustratingly, those first shots appeared better than anything else I subsequently did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I used some tape across the top of the box to get a consistent paint entry position, and I used a steel ruler in the water to fix the manual focus of my camera before pouring the paint in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results of a first and second series of attempts are shown above. I did also try using a GoPro in SlowMo mode second time around, but the quality really wasn&#8217;t good enough &#8211; there&#8217;s one shot from the GoPro above. I mostly used my A7iii. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do not underestimate how much time you&#8217;ll need to clean up the water and box after each attempt. And the box had a nasty habit of condensing over when you used anything but cold water. I got through a number of paper towels and lens wipes to keep the outside clear. I do think that glass might be better for this, since despite lots of cleaning, acrylic paint in water with an acrylic surface probably means staining. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, my box is relatively small, and having a larger one would mean I could get further away from the paint entry point at the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For delivering the paint, which was pre-mixed with water, I used a couple of plastic bottles &#8211; designed, I believe, for dispensing vinegar! I also managed to get one oral syringe, which might have been better overall bet. Getting a syringe in a chemist without sounding like you&#8217;re a junkie is interesting&#8230; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, it would have been nice to capture some stills as well. I can obviously lift stills from the video but that mostly in HD (my camera won&#8217;t shoot 4K at truly high speeds). And pressing a camera shutter cable while releasing at least two paints simultaneously might be a minimum of a two-person job!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day I was drinking a cup of tea in one of those caf\u00e9s where they provide the hot water, tea bag and milk separately. I let the tea brew before stirring the milk in and was entranced by the smokey effect of the milk being stirred into the water. Then I went to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[1001,61,557],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9107,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105\/revisions\/9107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}