FLAX Canvas

Get to know your greys! Daniel Smith has been collaborating with artists to bring new greys to their signature series of watercolor paints. Be the first to get your hands on some of these new colors at our Daniel Smith Watercolor Seminar at the FLAX Oakland store on March 23rd. CLICK HERE to reserve your spot! All Daniel Smith watercolors will be 25% off the day of the workshop.Jane's Grey: Last year Daniel Smith began working with artist Jane Blundell on manufacturing Jane's …

(All swatches are a 1:1 ration of black to red)Carbon Black (also known as Lamp Black) is a very strong neutral black pigment. As you can see, a little goes a long way. Lamp Black used to be made from the soot that would accumulate on old oil lamps. Nowadays it is produced in a more efficient way and contains pure carbon which is gained from an incomplete burning of oil and gas.Bone Black (or Ivory Black) is also considered a type of "carbon black" because of how the pigment is made - fro …

Let's talk surfaces. Mixed Media papers typically have a medium/vellum drawing surface with a slight amount of tooth (texture) that works well with mediums like graphite, marker, pen & ink, and colored pencil. Traditional watercolor paper typically has more tooth, which does not allow for finer details or creating depth of tone when using dry mediums. The most common watercolor paper surface is cold press. Cold press paper has a good amount of texture or 'peaks and valleys' o …

An undertone, figuratively speaking, is a characteristic or quality that is present but not clear or obvious. When talking about inks we talk in terms of warm or cool undertones. The undertone of an ink can be revealed when the ink is spread thin so that it is less dense, and light can filter all the way to the substrate and bounce back up through the thin film of color. As you can see from this comprehensive undertone test created by Jane from our Fine Pens Department, not all black inks …

No! Not all inks will work in a fountain pen because.....Fountain pen friendly inks: water-based inks that get their color from DYES (with some exceptions for certain micropigmented inks).At FLAX, we carry a variety of fountain pen friendly ink brands, including Waterman, Pelikan (both the 4001 and Edelstein collections), LAMY, Parker, Sheaffer, Sailor, Noodler's Ink, J. Herbin, Diamine, and Pilot Iroshizuku. The inks pictured here include (left to right, tope to bottom): Diamine, J. Herbin's Pe …