Choosing the Right Medium for Coloring Acetate

Last week I shared how to stamp on acetate using inks and paints. We will be using those stamped images and adding color to them.   If you’d like to see the article about how to stamp on acetate sheets with inks and paints.

When choosing a medium for coloring on acetate, it’s important to understand the properties of your mediums. Will it work on non-absorbent surfaces? Is the medium water-based or oil based? Understanding the properties of your mediums goes a long way towards getting great results with coloring on acetate.

Working on a Non-Absorbent Surface

When working on a non-absorbent surface like acetate, coloring mediums act very differently. Many water-based mediums require absorption into the surface for the medium to dry. But acetate isn’t one of these surfaces. Because of this, you need to use a coloring medium that will dry on a non-absorbent surface.

The Best (and Worst) Coloring Mediums for Acetate

Today we’ll be covering mediums that will work on acetate and a few common coloring mediums that won’t work well on this surface.  

Watercolor Pens

Many of us have water-based or watercolor pens that we may want to use on acetate. Examples of watercolor or water-based pens include Crayola markers, Tombow Dual Brush pens, and Graphix Aqua pens.   

What these pens have in common is that they are designed to absorb into the surface of the paper. When used on acetate, they won’t dry because the surface isn’t absorbent.

When you first add watercolor pens to acetate, the color is beautiful. But as it sits on the surface, you’ll notice that the color will start pooling in some areas and pulling away leaving white spots in others. This leaves you with a splotchy and uneven surface.
 

More importantly, the ink will not dry. I tested it by leaving it out for several hours, but even then, it was still wet to the touch. The ink was easy to remove from the surface with a wet paper towel. I don’t recommend these markers for use on acetate, they just don’t work well.  

It’s important that we know what ink is in our pens. Any water-soluble ink will rewet with water and won’t dry on acetate. Understanding these properties will help us choose the right pen for our project.  

Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens

Faber- Castell PITT artist pens come in a large range of colors and work perfectly on acetate. I highly recommend these pens and they are one of my favorite mediums for acetate. The PITT pens have a pigmented India ink that is lightfast and creates bold and beautiful color. This works well on clear surfaces like acetate, where the boldness of the color really helps with the design.

Generally, when I work on acetate, I tend to use darker pen colors so that I have strong color on the clear surface. Pale and pastel colors won’t work as well on acetate as they won’t be seen as well, unless they are then adhered to white paper.  

Faber-Castell PITT pens are a great choice because of the nib type is very forgiving. You can use the side of these brush pens to add a layer of color very quickly, but then the tip can be used for adding in fine details.
 

I also like to blend the colors on the acetate surface. For this example, I used yellow, orange and red. As you can see, by blending them into each other, you can create some beautiful custom colors. But be aware, when you blend the colors, this may discolor your pen tip a bit. To clear the color off the nib, write on a scrap piece of paper for a few strokes. This will remove the unwanted color and the pen will start writing in the original color again.

Give the ink a few minutes to dry. When you’re working on non-absorbent surfaces, most inks and coloring mediums need a longer drying time. This is because the ink is sitting on top of the surface instead of being absorbed into the fibers of the surface.  
 

Best Inks and Paints for PITT Pens

If you are going to color in a stamped image on your acetate with PITT pens, I would suggest using black StazON ink for stamping or black acrylic paint. The PITT pen will work perfectly on the stamped images using these products.

With Ranger Jet Black Archival Ink I found that even after I let the stamped image fully dry, I was still having issues with the PITT pens picking up black ink on the tips of the pen. This muddies the color and isn’t a result I’m happy with. You can clean the pen on paper to get rid of this color, but I prefer StazOn ink over archival ink.

Any Questions?

I know that we’ve covered a lot of mediums today for coloring acetate. I hope that this simplifies your process when it comes choosing a medium. I’d suggest testing a bunch of different coloring mediums. You might find one that you love that you didn’t really expect to work. I found that out when testing the Zebra brush pens.  

I’d love to know what mediums that you use for coloring acetate. Please leave a comment below and I’d love to start a conversation with you!