mr. s, I've always held to the old notion that dyes and stains are different. Dyes dissolve completely in the carrying medium and physically change the colour of the wood cells. On the other hand stains are made with a carrying medium-- water, spirit or oil and contain colourant made of large pigments that don't dissolve fully and largely don't penetrate the wood fibres. There's a third type which is a hybrid, i.e., dye stains. They contain both dye and pigments-- they dye the wood and lodge pigment in open pores.
For the most part if I want to change and get an even background colour to the wood I use dyes. However, even dyes used directly on wood will be taken up more by the spongier tissues found in the open pores of things like ash, elm and oak. If I then want to highlight the grain of the wood I choose a stain, sometimes called a pigment stain. This sounds like it's essentially what you're making using your artists colours.
I don't use stains much on fine pored woods like maple, beech and sycamore, unless I choose to sand to something coarse like 120 or 150 grit-- see the next sentence but one for why. I do use them on coarse or open pored timbers like ash, chestnut, oak, and semi-open pored woods like mahogany and walnut. The stain is intended to lodge pigment in the open pores (spring growth in ring porous woods) to highlight the open grain, either by blending into the background with a darker colour, or by adding a contrasting colour.
I may have misread you, but it sounds to me that you are attempting to achieve a dyeing effect with a stain. It'll colour the open pores but simply wipes off the tighter grained summer wood.
Pigment stains need a binder to bind the pigments to the wood. Ready made canned versions often contain a bit of varnish or linseed oil to act as the binder, perhaps only about 3%- 7% by volume. You might try adding one or the other of these to your mix, or even both.
Adding ammonia to dyes is an old trick to make them bite a bit more. It works best on tannin rich woods that react with ammonia where it darkens them slightly, thus emphasising the colour change. 0.880 ammonia is the stuff most people use for fuming and adding to dyes. It's industrial grade stuff so it's not always easy to buy. Slainte.