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Canadian printmakers face a double problem — the market is small so anything out of the ordinary has to be ordered from the States and because we printmakers are seeking to use products in a non-standard application, sales and support are also difficult. I had to do a lot of running around just to get my hands on the ink so I will save you some of the hassle by setting out the details.

I am using acrylic Spinks Ink. This has a very long open time, very stiff ink and this is what I used in previous blogs. Professor Sippel says not use Akua ink, which cleans up with water, and it makes sense that it would be unsuitable. I have also tried Charbonnel, a lovely intaglio ink, but since it crusts over, I am sticking with Spinks. Remember you loosen this with linseed oil before applying with a sponge roller.

Spinks does not sell to the public; I went through MarkAndy, which is a world wide distributor of litho presses. If you order on their website, shop.markandy.com, it will ask you where you reside and if you type in “Canada”, a new window pops up and you go from there. Roland Eble (reble@markandy.com) is the rep for Canadian sales. In my case, I paid with a credit card and the stuff arrived by UPS without having to pay duty. 1-800-387-3143.

I bought the three primary colours, white and black as follows: pantone yellow 33, rubine red 18, process blue 58, black 700, opaque white 84. The Markandy site does NOT show the colours (just words) as its customers generally know what they want.

PS treat Akua containers very carefully as they can crack in the base, if dropped, thereby creating a BIG MESS.