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!

Arteza Real Brush Pens -- Review and Comparisons

 

In preparation for my Holidays in Ink challenge, I've got my eyes open for supplies that might be interesting to work with. That's not to say that I don't have PLENTY right here in the studio, but when I saw this 48-color set of Arteza Real Brush Pens on Amazon Prime Day, my willpower abandoned me! I decided to dive in and give them a test drive, since I love working with ink and brush pens. I did a few sketches and tests with them, along with several comparisons with other non-waterproof inks and brush pens that I'm already using. 

Twenty White Gouache and White Watercolor Brand Comparisons

When I want a bright white highlight on a sketch, I often count on white gouache to do the job. All whites are created equal, right? Wrong. In fact, even all Titanium Whites are not created equal. On my sketches, I've noticed if a brand of white gouache isn't a brilliant white, or isn't opaque enough, or has an annoying sheen to it. Whether this is due to different brands of the pigment itself, or differences in the color of the binders, the whites are not the same. Consistency, texture, ease of application, and sheen also vary, which affect their use and appearance.

Over the years, as I accumulated and used new gouache and watercolor whites, I made swatches of them on gray paper to see how they measured up against one another. Today, I noticed that there were 20 swatches on the sheet, so I thought it was time for a little Reveal Party.

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

May Ink Drop

11x17" across a two page spread in a Stillman & Birn Epsilon Hardbound sketchbook

De Atramentis Rose

De Atramentis Hyacinth

De Atramentis Elderberry

Diamine Meadow

and Pilot Iroshizuku Murasaki-Shikibu inks

Assorted dip pens

At the beginning of every month, five vials of ink samples arrive in my mailbox via the Goulet Pen Company Ink Drop. I don't always have time to test drive all of them right away, but this month I pulled them out and played with a bunch of dip pens to see what the colors looked like and how they washed with a wet brush. Every color was a winner, and I found myself surprised by how much I enjoyed working with the scented inks like the Rose and Hyacinth.

None of these inks are "archival" in terms of being able to hang a sketch on a wall where it would be exposed to sunlight. But they should fare fine inside a sketchbook as long as it's not dipped in water!

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.

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!

Mini Muted Palette

Stillman & Birn 5.5x8.5" Epsilon Hardbound sketchbook

Watercolor, Noodler's Lexington Gray ink in a Lamy Safari

I had an extra mini kids' watercolor palette lying around, so I decided to use it for a limited palette. I chose an assortment of seven muted colors (since there were 8 spaces for paints after popping out the ones that came in the set), plus the white gouache that I always carry along "just in case". But then I thought, "Gee, seven colors plus white is really not a 'limited' anything!" Although I titled it Limited Palette because it's a range of muted colors, that's a term that us usually indicative of not only muted colors, but also just a few of them!

I played with mixes and made some determinations regarding what I want to keep and what I'd like to swap out for something else. The colors listed are a starting point, and I expect this palette will be an evolving exploration. I've already ordered some new colors to replace a few of these. I've been looking forward to using a group of mostly warm colors like these on lightly toned paper --- ivory or peach or some other warm tint. I am really loving the olive greens I'm getting with the Quinacridone Gold and Paynes Grey.