Bleedthrough vs. Feathering, or Inconvenient vs. Unforgivable

            Whether or not you’ve heard terms like “bleed through” or “feathering” used to describe art supplies, you’ve almost certainly experienced both. Bleed through occurs when an ink is so wet it “bleeds” through the page and onto the other side, and usually onto whatever surface lies below the page. Heavy inks from alcohol markers like Copics and Prismacolors will bleed through thinner paper very easily, like on the sketch page shown below.

Bleed through

Feathering, on the other hand, involves a more horizontal movement of ink. When an ink feathers, it spreads out in small strands away from the initial line of the pen. Usually, an ink that bleeds will also feather, but the two can occur exclusively. Wet inks like this Waterman Blue combined with absorbent paper will often lead to feathering.

Feathering

When I talk to my artist friends and read blogs from artists and fans of stationary, I tend to see and hear a lot more complaints about the former issue than the latter. This confuses me greatly. While bleed through is an annoyance for sure, I don’t believe it is nearly as severe of an issue as I find feathering to be.

When I’m drawing, I want to have full control over the marks I make on my paper. If my ink bleeds through the page, I say “Oh well,” I put a piece of scratch paper under my canvas, and I keep working. When my ink feathers, my lines are cheapened and messy, and I’m faced with a problem that impacts the part of my process that I’m showing to other people. I would much rather have a piece of paper with good art on only one side of the page, rather than two sides of the page filled with drawings with unfocused and messy lines. Nothing bothers me more than watching those tiny feathers spread out of an ink line that I just laid down. I take the time to plan out the placement of every line in my drawings, and feathering creates hundreds of tiny, accidental lines that cheapen the value of the lines I intentionally placed. I can handle bleed through with some pretty minimal countermeasures, but feathering cannot be mitigated unless you change your pen, your paper, or both.