Printer ink (for inkjet desktop printers) has two main components: water and pigment (insoluble in water) or dye (soluble in water). The dye or pigment provide the color. In addition, there are some other components to modify the properties of the ink such as anti-foaming agents or surfactants to help lower the surface tension (make it easier to form droplets).

The reason that printer ink dries so fast does not have to do with the chemical makeup but rather with the very small amounts of ink that are used. If you have ever printed a page that was solid color, you might have noticed because that would end up somewhat soggy. If printing text, however, only a small part of the page will receive ink. The letters are made up of many small dots which are droplets of ink. These droplets are a few to several tens of picoliters small, depending on the printer and what is being printed. A liter is a little more than a quart, and a picoliter is the trillionth part of a liter, or the millionth part of a millionth part of a liter. This means that the smallest droplets have about the diameter of a human red blood cell. As you may know from your own experience, a small amount of water spread on a surface dries very quickly. This is why the ink of the printer dries quickly, not a chemical trick.