Diamine Inkvent Favorites - 2021 Red Edition

In spite of an overflowing cabinet of fountain pen inks, I purchased the 2021 Inkvent Calendar by Diamine to have 25 new inks to explore during the Holidays in Ink Challenge. (Twenty-four of them are shown in the image above.) Diamine will be releasing these inks in bottles for individual purchase in early 2022, for those who weren't fortunate enough to snap up one of the collections. This post showcases my personal favorites from the set. And, yes, I have a LOT of favorites!

Best of the Year, Part I

Happy 2013 to all my viewers! I'd like to start off the new year by sharing my favorite discoveries and new products of the past year. Some are new to the market, while others are things I'd just not explored before and hope to work with more in the year to come. I hope that some of you will enjoy using them too.

Today's post is about my favorite pigment of 2012: PR206. It is actually a Quinacridone red, but looks more earthy than many of the Quins. This pigment gives me a warm red, transparent earth color. It can easily be mixed with earthy yellows to yield the equivalent of a transparent red oxide. When mixed with ultramarine blue, it creates a dark, muted violet. I started using this color in my watercolor palette after taking a class with David Taylor. It became such a staple in my palette that I searched for the same pigment in oils and acrylics. The past few years have found me working transparently a lot more in both oils and acrylics, so this pigment was a natural fit --- especially for underpainting and glazing. I did several paintings using it as my only red. The pigment goes by many different names, so you need to look carefully for the pigment number, which is PR206.

Here are a few manufacturers that make it for different mediums.

Watercolor
Daniel Smith --- Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet
Winsor Newton --- Brown Madder

Oils
Maimeri Puro --- Avignon Orange
Daniel Smith --- Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet

Acrylics
Golden Fluid --- Quinacridone Burnt Orange
Golden Heavy Body --- Quinacridone Burnt Orange
Golden OPEN --- Quinacridone Burnt Orange

Click here to see Best of the Year, Part II.

Lightfastness Test Results on Noodlers Eternal Inks, pigmented and iron gall inks, and more

Last year, I began some lightfastness testing on the full line of Noodler's Eternal Inks, as well as pigmented and iron gall inks by other brands (Sailor, Rohrer & Klingner, Diamine, and Platinum). This was done in collaboration with Brian Goulet of the Goulet Pen Company. Brian was interested in providing information to his customers, and I was interested in learning which inks would be best to use for assorted art applications. You can click here to see how I set up the test sheets.

It is now many months later, and the results are in! I tested 41 eternal, pigmented, and iron gall inks. There are another 45 or so inks that I tested at the same time, which do not fall into those categories, and I will discuss those briefly here as well. Before I go into the results, it is important to note that terminology varies between fountain pen folks and artists. No fountain pen ink is expected to live up to archival standards in art materials terms. These inks are not designed to be lightfast when exposed to UV light. Brian and I both faced this test with low expectations, which were, for the most part, confirmed. That being said, there were some inks that held up better than expected, and others that did surprisingly terrible in their class. Also, ink manufacturers sometimes make changes in color or composition of their inks between batches, so the results you get may be different from mine. For example, Noodler's Lexington Gray performed much better this time than a sample of it that I'd tested a couple of years ago.

SUMMARY
After five months, there were no inks that looked exactly the same as their control samples. However, some did extremely well, and changed very little. Those changes might not even be visible in the photos. The inks that were in this top tier are:

• Noodler's Black
• Noodler's Blackerase Waterase (big surprise for me!)
• Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng
• Noodlers La Reine Mauve
• Platinum Carbon Black
• Platinum Pigmented Blue
• Sailor Nano Black
• Sailor Blue Black

The second tier lists the inks that had a color shift greater than the inks above, but they didn't shift or fade very much. Those inks are:

• Noodlers Heart of Darkness
• Noodlers Polar Black
• Noodlers X-feather
• Noodlers Lexington Gray
• Noodlers Bad Blue Heron
• Noodlers Luxury Blue
• Noodlers Polar Blue

The third tier is basically everything else. These inks either had a huge color shift, faded a lot, or in some cases, nearly vanished. Below are the photos, so you can have a look for yourselves.

I gave a preliminary report last February about how the inks changed after the first six weeks. The samples then went back into the window for another three and a half months. Some changed little in the first six weeks and then nearly vanished! Others changed quite a bit in the first six, and not too much more after that. I attribute that to different ingredients and dyes in the inks, some of which are responding to the UV light faster or slower than others. Because of this interesting difference in the time frames, I am going to post both the six week and five month samples one below the other. Only the Noodlers Eternal Inks have six-week results, since I put those tests into the window first. The others have only the five-month images. (They went into the window later and came out later.)

Artists who are interested in knowing which inks can create a wash, and the color of the wash, will be able to see that in the samples. That washed area is generally where changes first appear, since there is a thinner application of the ink there. The six week and five month photos were taken with different cameras and different light sources, but you can still do the comparisons on each page. You can click images for a larger, clearer view. One thing you will notice is that due to the optical brighteners in the paper, the UV light caused the paper to yellow a bit by the five month mark, even though it is archival paper.

The control side is on the left, which was kept inside a sketchbook. The right side of each page was in the window. I then taped the pages back together to photograph them. It's much easier to make the comparisons with the sides together this way.

If you have a favorite ink in this test group, be sure you look at both the six week and five month samples! Remember that some inks that showed little change in six weeks had huge changes just a few weeks later. All images are clickable for a larger, clearer view.

Sheet 1, Six week sample:

Sheet 1, after five months:

Sheet 2, six week sample:

Sheet 2, five month sample:

Sheet 3, six week sample:

Sheet 3, five month sample:

Sheet 4, six week sample:

Sheet 4, five month sample:

Sheet 5, six week samples:

Sheet 5, five month samples:

Sheet 6, six week samples:

Sheet 6, five month samples:

Sheet 7, six week samples:

Sheet 7, five month samples:

Below are tests of the following inks that were included in the study, but not photographed at the six week mark. These were also in the window for five months:

• Platinum Carbon Black
• Platinum Pigmented Rose Red
• Platinum Pigmented Sepia
• Platinum Pigmented Blue
• Sailor Sei-Boku Blue Black
• Sailor Kiwa-Gura Nano Black
• Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa
• Rohrer & Klingner Salix
• Diamine Registrar's Blue-Black

Sheet 8, five month samples:

Sheet 9, five month samples:

That was it for the Eternal, iron gall, and pigmented ink samples I had for testing. If you found some of those results discouraging, you'll feel better about them once you look at inks that don't fall into those categories. I didn't even photograph most of those, because for the most part, they nearly vanished. Below are two examples.

Sheet 10 after five months:

Sheet 11 after 5 months:

Thank you all for your patience in waiting for these results. It took a long time to get these all done and photographed, adjusted, and posted. I hope it was worth the wait for you, and that you find this information useful. It's been interesting for me to see how some of my personal favorites have fared, and as an artist, I now know more about which inks I'd use for what applications. 

I previously tested many other fountain pen inks and put the results up on my blog with images. You can see those on these links:
Lightfastness Results
More Ink Lightfastness Test Results
Lightfastness Results of 15 More Ink Samples
Eleven More Lightfastness Tests Revealed

Dogwood Blossoms

Image can be clicked for a larger version

6x18" on Stillman & Birn Beta paper

Watercolor

My favorite way to work in watercolor is to Just Do It. No pencil lines (or just a few for compositional guidance), no ink......Just straight in directly with a brush and pigment, getting as much down in a single pass as possible. There's something very unique about the way watercolor glows and jumps off the page when it's not fussed with. About six months ago, I ditched the non-transparent colors in my watercolor palette, and found that also made a huge difference in getting the paint and paper to give each other their very best.

That's not to say that I don't need to occasionally bail myself out with opaque lights like Cadmium Yellow or even Titanium White, or that I don't enjoy working with opaque color at times too --- especially on a toned surface. I do. But in restructuring my palette over the past six months, I decided to use gouache for that purpose. After all, if you need to go opaque, that's the way to do it. I took one of the Schmincke palettes that comes with two rows of half pans, removed the metal plate, and squeezed five (yes, five!) rows of half pans into it. Three of those rows were watercolor, and two were gouache. You may recall the post I did about that palette not too long ago. Here's my color chart from that set, as of last week:

It gave me a lot to choose from, but it proved to be heavy for hiking in the mountains. So last week, I pulled out my old palette, which is this one:

 

I discovered that by removing the metal plate and turning the half pans sideways, I could fit a fourth row into that smaller palette, and it's a lot lighter too. It was hard deciding which colors would stay and which would go, but this is the configuration I eventually ended up with:

 Yep, I'm down to one row of gouache, and kept three rows of transparent watercolor pigments. The dogwood blossoms sketch was one of my test drives for this new setup. So far, it seems to be working, and I'm happy with the lighter weight. Of course, when I need to travel super-light, I can always resort to the mini set I posted yesterday.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that as artists, our ideas continue to change, evolve, and come back around. It's all part of the fun of exploring our world of materials. What we work with depends on what we're painting, what we're painting on, how much time we have, what we're able to carry, and where we're going. And of course as watercolor painters well know, one can never have too many palettes! ;)

I know I promised a tour of my little red sketch kit for today, but I realized I need to take one more photo and do the image adjustment before I can write that post. It will come soon though!

Watercolor and Gouache are cohabitating in my palette!

Lexington Gray ink in a Lamy Safari fountain pen

Watercolor and Gouache

Stillman & Birn Epsilon 8.5x11" hardbound sketchbook

I finally found a way to set up my palette to fit watercolor and gouache together. I test drove it the other day and it worked fabulously well. A number of people have been asking me about this palette and how I did the reconfiguration, so here goes.....

I bought this palette online from Wet Paint Art Supply  in Minnesota. Apparently they are only made by special order, so Wet Paint ordered a bunch. Their customers liked them so much that they sold out almost immediately and ordered a lot more! The palette only comes with 12 colors (in two rows of six), with room for a third row of your own half pans and colors, for a total of 18. So, how did I transform this into something that will hold 32 half pans and one whole pan?

There is a metal plate with holders for the pans. It weighs a ton. I took that out. I fiddled with half pans in the empty space to see how many I could fit, and what the best configuration would be. I discovered that four rows of seven colors each would fit with the pans placed vertically,  but that I could squeeze in a fifth row if I had the pans run horizontally. In that last row, because of the curves on the corners of the palette, only five would fit. But I could fit a whole pan vertically in place of one of the half pans --- there was enough space to accommodate that. I am always needing extra white gouache when I'm painting with gouache, so I decided I'd keep my white in that one.

I took out a roll of adhesive magnetic strip. It comes rolled up like a roll of tape. I bought mine a long time ago and I don't remember what brand it was, but it looks something like this. I bought it in a craft store. I cut five strips that fit across the width of the palette. Since they were curled from being in the roll, I heated them with a hair dryer, which softened them a bit, and pressed them under a few very heavy coffee table books overnight. The next day, they were flat. With the adhesive side up (bare magnetic side down), I placed them in the palette, approximating where they would go.

I'd already decided which colors would go where the night before. I filled the pans that weren't already loaded, and wrote the names of the colors on each pan with a black fine point Sharpie. Starting with the top row, I peeled the paper strip off the magnet, revealing the adhesive, and stuck each pan down onto the adhesive strip, working across the row. I put in three rows of watercolor pigments (21 colors), then the 12 pans of gouache.

One thing about working watercolor and gouache together is that the opacity of the gouache, plus the chalkiness of white paint, can get into your transparent watercolor and destroy all that beautiful luminosity. This is why I always kept them in separate palettes. Since this metal palette has two sides, it keeps them separated easily. I'm used to having just two mixing areas for watercolor --- one for warm colors and one for cool. So the two sides of the top mixing area provide the wells I need. However, for gouache I need more areas, since I have to be able to mix value as well as color. All those little wells in the lower area are perfect for my gouache!

I was also able to eliminate the opaque watercolors from my palette. Usually I have cadmium red, a couple of cadmium yellows, cadmium orange, chromium oxide green, and a couple of other opaque watercolors in my watercolor palette. Now I can just substitute gouache when I need those, and keep all my watercolors transparent. That gives me an even larger color range than I had before.

I made the chart above so that I could keep track of what colors were in which pans, until I get to know my own system better. I also knew that initially, I'd be making some changes; that's why I numbered the pans on my sketch, instead of writing in color names. When I change a color, I can just change the name on the numbered list of pigments. I've already swapped out a few and shifted some around.

I've been looking for a way to do this for several years, but never found quite the right thing. This works for me at last!

Noodlers Eternal Inks Preliminary Lightfastness Results

Many thanks to all of you for waiting so patiently for these preliminary results! For those who don't know what I'm talking about , you can click here to read about these lightfastness tests of the Noodler's Eternal Inks, and see how I set up the tests.

Last week, I was a guest on the Goulet Pen Company's webcast show, "Write Time at 9!" During that broadcast, I did a verbal reveal of changes to the samples. If you were unable to tune in at that time, you can watch the recorded broadcast below. I come on at about the 10:00 minute mark.

The right sides of the samples posted below were in my south-facing studio window for just six weeks, in the northeastern United States. It's the heart of winter here, when the sun is at its weakest. They got a few hours of direct sunlight a day through a screen and glass. I will be putting the samples back into a window tomorrow, and I'll do another reveal in six months to show the differences.

The tests are pretty self-explanatory. You can click any image below to see an enlargement. In the broadcast, I verbally described the changes to some of the inks, and you can click that link above if you'd like to hear more of my summary. Here on this post, I'll just list them for now in three categories:

1. Inks that didn't change
2. Inks that changed the most
3. Inks that changed a little

The inks that had no visible changes so far are:

• Black
• Blackerase/Waterase
• Heart of Darkness
• Polar Black
• X Feather
• Lexington Gray
• Bad Blue Heron
• Luxury Blue
• Polar Blue
• Polar Green
• Kung Te-Cheng
• La Reine Mauve
• #41 Brown (2012 version)
• Polar Brown

Inks that changed the most during this time frame are:

• Periwinkle
• Hunter Green
• Dostoyevsky
• Year of the Golden Pig
• Empire
• Fox
• Rachmaninoff
• Tchaikovsky
• Pasternak
• Whaleman's Sepia

Inks that showed a slight change during the six weeks are:

• El Lawrence
• Bad Belted Kingfisher
• Bad Green Gator
• Socrates
• Mata Hari's Cordial
• Bad Black Moccasin

There are two other inks that I did not discuss in the broadcast: Whiteness of the Whale, and Blue Ghost. I did test these, but I believe I need to look at them under a blacklight, and I have not yet done that. I'll report on those when I do my follow-up on these Noodler's Eternal inks, in another six months.

So without further delay, here are the images of the samples. The right half of each page was taken down from the window, taped on the back to the half in the book, and photographed. Those artists who are interested in knowing which inks wash and the color of the wash will be able to see that in the samples. That washed area is generally where changes first appear, since there is a thinner application of the ink there.

I hope many of you have found this information useful. It's been interesting for me to see how some of my personal favorites have fared! I'll be testing another 40-50 inks very soon. Stay tuned for a list within the next couple of weeks to see if any of your favorites are among them. After they've been in the window for a month or so, I'll do a post of preliminary results like this one, followed by six month results down the road.

Pitt Big Brush Pens and Stillman and Birn Epsilon --- a match made in Heaven!

Pitt Warm Grey Big Brush Pens

Stillman & Birn Epsilon 8.5x11" hardbound sketchbook

I have a book of old photographs of great composers. It's in black and white, and every so often I break it open for some monochrome portrait practice while watching TV or listening to music. The other night, I decided to test drive my new Warm Grey Pitt Big Brush Pens on the silky-smooth paper of the Epsilon book. I spent about 45 minutes on this sketch of Italo Montemezzi using the photo reference. I totally fell in love with this combination of materials. I worked directly in ink, so that combined with the waterproof ink limited opportunities to blend values or make corrections. For sketching purposes I often prefer a direct approach with few changes, and I'm looking forward to working more with this combination of materials.

About the paper: The sizing on this paper lets the ink sit up on the surface. That means that it takes longer to dry, and with permanent ink, I think it's a huge benefit. I was able to move the ink around with a waterbrush or smear it with my finger if I did so quickly, so I had some blending capabilities until it set. I need to work with this combination more to learn to take better advantage of that, but I can see that it will be extremely useful. There was no bleed-through of the ink to the other side of the page, in spite of multiple coats of heavy application in some areas, and it is archival. The Epsilon paper is very smooth, allowing for easy detailing, and the brush pens move easily across the surface. I'm thinking that the points on the brush pens will be much better preserved on this type of surface than on a rougher, or even vellum texture. I absolutely loved working this size with the big brush pens. It's much more freeing than working in a smaller book with a finer point. So, I just might have to have two art journals going at the same time after all; I need to think more on this.

About the Pitt Big Brush Pens: Wow! I love these to bits! I've tried the Kuretake brush pens, Pentel brush pens, Aquash brush pens, Noodler's brush pens, and many others. These Pitt Big Brush Pens can cover so much more ground, have firmer tips with better spring, come to a nice sharp point for detail work. They put out enough ink to keep up with my sketching, are waterproof and archival, and available in 58 colors! I have not yet used them in combination with watercolors, but I have tried to budge the dry ink with a waterbrush and scrubbing with my finger to no avail. It's not going anywhere! I bought a lot of them to have working "sets" in various color groups, plus a few bright ones for those times when you need a strong spot of a bright color. I'll be showing some figure sketches tomorrow using a few different color combinations. This portrait was done with the four "Warm Grey" colors. The palette is shown on the page. I guess I could have added black to it also, but the Warm Grey V was so dark that even though I had the black out, I never used it.

Altered Book --- A Little Side Project

Quick boat studies

11x17" across a two page spread in my altered book

Although I prefer to work just in one main art journal at a time, there are sometimes reasons for turning to something else. In this case, I didn't want to burn through a lot of good, expensive paper for quick sketches and experiments. My plan was to use this other book for short poses in life drawing sessions, as well as quick practice sketches of one kind or another that I don't want to put into my art journal. I decided to take an old 8 1/2 x 11" book which still had a good, solid binding, and gesso pages to sketch on. That way it would be very inexpensive, and the gesso would soften the background text or images to increase depth while eliminating the visual distraction or competition with the sketches.The sketch above of the boats was done over one of the maps in the book. I thought it rather appropriate that they were sketched over oceans!

I selected a book with a lot of graphical content, as well as pages of full text. I used Golden Acrylic Gesso, and also tried some pages with Golden Absorbent Ground, as well as a couple with Golden Black Gesso just for fun. I thought the Absorbent Ground might provide a better working surface if I wanted to add any watercolor washes. The sketch above of the boats was done using Pitt Brush Pens on pages coated with the Golden Absorbent Ground. (Just because I liked the idea of doing them on the page spread with the map, and that happened to be prepared that way.)

I tested out my gouache and watercolor palettes to see how the colors would look on the surface of this paper with the Absorbent Ground. Answer: Pretty dull, though in person they have more vibrancy than they do in this digital image. Plus, it wrinkled the paper more than the Golden Acrylic Gesso. Speaking of which, if buckling paper bothers you, an altered book like this is probably not something that would interest you. Even pages coated with gesso did wrinkle. Of course, this paper was designed for printed text, and not for wet media! The gesso does add strength to the paper and gives it some sizing, but at the cost of some wrinkling. I dried each page spread with a hair dryer as I went along, then set it under a very heavy coffee table book overnight to help control some of the wrinkling.

On the left side above, you can see the ink from a sketch on the previous page coming through the paper a bit. That was a blank page, so I didn't coat it with anything on either side. Pages that were sized with either the Golden Acrylic Gesso or the Golden Absorbent Ground did not bleed through, nor show ghosting of images on the reverse side of the pages. (The wrinkling on that left hand page is just from the little bit of watercolor used in that one area of the previous page, and not from applying a sizing.)

Below, the page on the left was sized with the gesso. The page on the right was only sized in one area.  I left the more graphical page text that was printed on the right side. I thought I might use it as inspiration for some doodles, and I just kind of liked it! On several of the pages, I left bits of text, titles, or graphical elements without applying gesso over them.

I took the book to life drawing a couple of weeks ago. It was my first time going to an open studio session this winter, and go figure; the model didn't show! Some people from the group took turns doing three minute poses, and then everybody went home. These were a few of the three minute poses I did to test drive the book. I used a Wolff's 6B carbon pencil with a waterbrush, and added some light washes to a couple of the figures.

From time to time, I'll be showing some of my figure work or sketches done in this book, but for the most part, it's for short poses, quick sketches, doodles, border designs that I'm working out, testing ideas for fonts, and other things where I not only don't want to waste high quality paper, but for the most part, it's not even worth taking the time to photograph, adjust and post the images! However, in the interest of exposing other artists to the potential for using old books, I thought it was worth the post. I had initial pangs of guilt about "destroying" a book. But it wasn't too hard for me to convince myself that a book is not a one-of-a-kind work of art. In this age of reusing, repurposing, recycling, and reducing waste, creating sketchbooks from old books feels like a good thing to do. If you are opposed to using a book this way, consider doing it with a phone book or old catalog!

Golden Black Gesso and Sakura Gelly Roll Pens

This was so much fun! (Image can be clicked for a larger, clearer view.) I used Golden Black Gesso to coat a few page spreads in my Stillman & Birn 5.5x8..5" Epsilon hardbound sketchbook, drying each with a hair dryer before going on to the next. One coat of the Golden Black Gesso perfectly coated the paper. I did try a couple of different dilutions of it also, but it was best right out of the jar the way it came. It applied a thin, totally opaque covering of the paper with a single coat. I used an inexpensive foam brush.

Then I diluted some Golden Fluid Acrylic Interference paints in spray bottles, using a little airbrush medium, flow release and water, and spritzed each page spread with a couple of different colors, drying them again with the hairdryer. I did this in preparation for a sketching trip to the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. They have a few very dark rooms with extremely interesting things and flourescent lighting, like jellyfish! This page in the book almost exactly mimics the dark, flourescent tank they were in. I grabbed a handful of Sakura Gelly Roll pens, purchased at a Jerrys store on my way to the Aquarium, and went to town with them.

The Gelly Roll pens worked fabulously on the gesso and the paper. They are very opaque, bright and smooth. I am going to get more!

Here's what the Sakura Gelly Roll pens that I got look like on black and on white. On the white paper, I brushed over the crosshatched sections with a waterbrush to see which ones will wash and which are waterproof.

That first sketch was fun, but it didn't give me exactly what I wanted. I turned to another black/interference page spread, and this time used gouache with some Gelly Roll pens over the top. I was much happier with this one!

This is something that I definitely want to spend more time exploring in the weeks to come!

Daniel Smith Watercolors and Palette Thoughts

New paints are so much fun! I got a bunch of colors from Daniel Smith last week --- some transparent yellows, as well as earthy reds and maroons. I also had to try their Blue Apatite and Moonglow, and Serpentine while I was at it!

I did some swatches and color comparision tests, and tried a few mixes, thinking about what might be effective for some new palette ideas I have.

I pulled out Craig Nelson's book, 60 Minutes to Better Painting. He has so many great ideas in there, and some interesting palettes too. I was admiring his analogous palette paintings and decided to put together a few analogous palettes to try out. I had some extra kids' watercolor sets that I'd popped the pigments out of. These tiny palettes are wonderful for trying new colors and ideas. I set three of them up as analogous palettes --- one red, one yellow, and one blue. That means that the entire painting should have that color in it, so for example, the blue analogous palette would have blue, a blue-green, a yellow-green, a bluish violet, and a reddish violet. The complement is used only to dull the colors, so although there would be an orange in the blue palette, it would be only for mixing purposes. Here are the three palettes and some test swatches I did:

The next day, I went to Adams Fairacre Farms in Wappinger NY. I decided to test drive the blue analogous palette in the greenhouse.

In the end, I couldn't resist adding the yellow flower centers, and I realized that an analogous palette is probably not the best choice for a flower garden or greenhouse! When I got home, I wanted to try it again, so I set up a still life and did a quick color study.

I'm afraid that for me, the jury is still out on this. Maybe I'm just not fond of all those cool colors, or maybe I like the pop of the complements too much for this limited approach. I haven't tried the red or yellow analogous palettes yet, but plan to do so soon. In the meantime, I'm going to let the color junkie in me have a little fun with some full color!

Note: The sketches above were done in a 5.5x8.5" Stillman and Birn Epsilon hardbound book. The color samples were done in an S&B Epsilon 8.5x11" hardbound book.

Noodler's Eternal Inks Lightfast Testing Preliminary Report

Brian Goulet of the Goulet Pen Company contacted me regarding some lightfastness testing I've been doing on a number of inks. So far I've tested 39 fountain pen inks. (If you haven't seen those results, you can click here and then keep scrolling down to see them all.) Whether or not lightfastness is an important issue is a decision you need to make for yourself, and your particular applications. Having the information available is always a good thing, and it gives us one more factor to consider when choosing an ink for a specific job.

In the interest of providing information to his customers, Brian suggested a collaborative venture to test all of the Noodler's Eternal inks, and have those results available on Inknouveau. Although some of my previous testing did include some of these inks, having them all done together at the same time, and available both there on Brian's site, and here on my blog, will be a good resource for those times when some UV resistance is important. The line of Noodler's Eternal Inks that we are testing includes the following:

• Noodler's Bad Black Moccasin
• Noodler's Black
• Noodler's Blackerase Waterase
• Noodler's El Lawrence
• Noodler's Heart of Darkness
• Noodler's Polar Black
• Noodler's X-Feather
• Noodler's Lexington Gray
• Noodler's Whiteness of the Whale
• Noodler's Blue Ghost
• Noodler's Bad Belted Kingfisher
• Noodler's Bad Blue Heron
• Noodler's Luxury Blue
• Noodler's Periwinkle
• Noodler's Polar Blue
• Noodler's Bad Green Gator
• Noodler's Hunter Green
• Noodler's Polar Green
• Noodler's Dostoyevsky
• Noodler's Year of the Golden Pig
• Noodler's Empire Red
• Noodler's Fox
• Noodler's Rachmaninoff
• Noodler's Socrates
• Noodler's Tchaikovsky
• Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng
• Noodler's La Reine Mauve
• Noodler's Mata Hari's Cordial
• Noodler's Pasternak
• Noodler's #41 Brown (2012)
• Noodler's Polar Brown
• Noodler's Whaleman's Sepia

I selected a Stillman & Birn Alpha 7x10" Wirebound book as my paper to do the tests. It's nicely sized, acid free, archival, heavy weight, doesn't have too much tooth, and is a clean bright white. Brian sent the 32 ink samples to me, and I got busy making swabs, crosshatches and washes to test in my studio window.

The ink samples were sorted by color group according to where Brian placed them in the Goulet Swab Shop, then by alphabetical order within that group. The swabs were done with Q-tips --- twice across on the top swab, and once across on the lower swab. All writing was done with a glass dip pen (including the crosshatched sections), which was washed and dried between samples. Artists who use fountain pens are often interested in knowing how much an ink's lines will wash with a water-filled brush after the ink is dry, so I washed a portion of the crosshatched sections with a wet brush. That also spread the ink thinner, providing additional information as the UV light interacts with the ink. Here are the prepared pages. You can click on any image for a larger, clearer version:

Black, Gray, White, Clear (Blue Ghost):

  

(My apologies for some ghosting on a couple of these images, due to the next page showing through a bit. I didn't realize that was happening until I was adjusting the images, and it's not too relevant at this stage in the process.)

Blues:

 

Greens, Turquoise, Yellow:

Red, Pink, Magenta:

Purples:

Browns:

The pages were then cut down the centers vertically, so that the name of the ink and half of each swatch is on each side. The right sides of the pages were placed in my south-facing studio window. The left sides will remain in the closed, wirebound book, where they will be in total darkness. Here they are, all set to go:

Most fountain pen inks are more fugitive than you'd think. That may not matter if whatever you write will not be exposed to UV light in its application, but it is certainly a reason to keep all of your inks stored in darkness.  Even colors in artists' paints that fade very quickly, like genuine alizarin crimson, take many times longer to show signs of change than fountain pen inks. Some inks start fading in just a matter of days. Others take six months or more.

I actually did this almost a month ago, so I will be posting preliminary results in about a week. That will give you an idea of which inks fade the fastest. I can tell you that a lot of them already have changed. So, stay tuned, especially if your favorite ink is on that list!