This is the Diamine Inkvent 2024 Day 11 door:

Day 11’s ink is Diamine Grotto, an “Extreme Sheen” reddish-orange ink. “Extreme Sheen” is a new ink property added to the calendar this year, and Diamine believe in truth in advertising: there’s an astonishing amount of sheen in this ink. I used Lamy Safari with a fine nib to test out Diamine Grotto and even with a fine nib the sheen came through on ever letter.

The base ink colour for Diamine Grotto is a deep, rich reddish orange, and it would have been welcome even without the extreme sheen, after all the grays and blues we’ve had.

The sheen, a golden green sheen, glows on every letter, making them pop almost as much as “Star Bright” glitter does. There’s a bit of shading with this ink, but it’s hard to see with all the sheen going around.

I compared Diamine Grotto with Diamine Fireside Snug, one of my favourite and most used inks from last year’s Inkvent, and Diamine Grotto is more saturated and tends a bit more to the red than Diamine Fireside Snug. It also has a lot of sheen, of course, which Fireside Snug doesn’t have.

If you prefer shading to sheen, you’d like Fireside Snug more. If you like a punchier ink, then Diamine Grotto is for you.

Here’s a writing sample on Rhodia paper. This Rhodia pad is fairly absorbent and so normally wouldn’t show much sheen, especially with a fine nib fountain pen, but even on this paper the sheen was obvious. However, because there was less sheen than on less absorbent paper you can see the base orange colour better here:

Angle the paper a bit and the sheen is immediately apparent. All the places that appear to glitter have the sheen effect on them:

Here’s a writing sample on original Tomoe River Paper, angled so that the light catches the masses of sheen here:

And here’s today’s sketch of one of my favourite bears, “Mud Pie”, on Midori MD Cotton paper. This ink is really warm and lovely and works well with the colour of his mohair.

And this is Mud Pie. He’s small and very cute and cuddly.

Diamine Grotto is a bright and warm ink with eye-catching golden green sheen that makes every letter glow. It’s not an ink I’d use in a vintage pen, but it’s still a fairly practical and fairly seasonal ink and a nice break away from the grays and blues we’ve seen in previous days. I have a bottle of Fireside Snug and so I doubt that I’d get a bottle of Grotto, but if you’re in the market for a reddish orange ink Diamine Grotto might be the ink you’re looking for.

Do you like sheening inks? Do you see yourself using Diamine Grotto? What do you think of the “Extreme Sheen” effect?