It’s time for day 11 in Diamine’s Inkvent calendar.
Door 11
Day 11’s ink is Diamine Appletini. I’m not sure how much of a tie in that has to Christmas, but I guess a bright green ink is always welcome at this time of year.
Diamine Appletini bottle
Diamine Appletini is a bright grass green standard ink with some nice shading to it.
Appletini swab on Col-o-Ring
It’s not a chameleon ink, but Appletini’s colour really brought to mind chameleons and so I sketched one for testing purposes:
Sketch in 52gsm Tomoe River paper
I used a Kaweco Sport iridescent medium nibbed fountain pen to test Diamine Appletini and got a good amount of shading with it. It’s not the most practical of colours, but is a bright and cheerful one, which make it nice to use during the cold and dark winter months.
It’s day 10 of Inkvent, and interesting inks are upon us…
Day 10’s door
Day 10’s ink is Diamine Dusted Truffle a shimmer ink of an indescribable shade of on the cusp between light brown and grey.
Diamine Dusted Truffle bottle
I took a photo of the swab on an angle to try and show the colour of this ink. It’s a dusty golden brown in some angles, it has a greenish tinge in others, it’s very unique and chimeric.
Swab on a Col-o-Ring
You can see the more greyish tendencies of this ink in this quick truffle sketch. I don’t know if dusted truffle is the best name for this ink, but it certainly has a dustiness about it. It shades well, and there’s a silver shimmer to it, where you’d normally expect a golden one. Perhaps that gives it some of its unique shading.
Dusted Truffle on 52gsm Tomoe River paper
Will I buy a full bottle of this ink? Maybe. It’s certainly high on my list, as I have nothing remotely like it in my ink selection, and it is an intriguing colour. I can’t stop staring at it trying to define what it is and failing. What a wonderful addition to Diamine’s ink lineup.
It’s time for day 9 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar.
Door 9
Day 9’s ink is Diamine Cardinal, an orangey red standard ink with a good amount of shading.
Diamine Cardinal ink bottle
I had two truly unfortunate accidents with this ink, and as a result the ink swab doesn’t look the best. It does show off Diamine Cardinal’s colour and shading properties well, though.
Diamine Cardinal swan on a Col-o-Ring
This was a joy to draw, because of the subject matter and the shading. I don’t like sketching with red ink, but it does lend drama to each drawing.
Diamine Cardinal on 52g Tomoe River paper
If you want to read about my woes with this ink, check out the writing sample below. I won’t be buying a bottle of this ink because I’m not a fan of red inks, but if you do like bright reds, then Diamine Cardinal is a very cheery colour with a good amount of character from its shading.
It’s day 8 of the Inkvent calendar already, and things are about to get bright and cheery…
Day 8’s door
Inkvent day 8’s ink is the fantastically name Diamine Jingle Berry. You really can’t get better than that for a Christmas themed ink name.
Jingle Berry bottle.
Jingle Berry is a rich fuchsia pink ink that’s labelled as a standard ink but has a good amount of outlining and some shading. It’s also called Jingle Berry, which automatically makes it the bestest of inks. I don’t make up the rules, I just follow them 😉
Diamine Jingle Berry swab on a Co-o-Ring
Diamine Jingle Berry is bound to make you smile: it’s the combination of the wonderful name with a truly joyful colour. It’s a dark pink, which means that it’s going to be legible on both white and cream papers, if legibility is what you are looking for in this ink (hint: you aren’t. You just want to have fun).
Jingle Berry flamingo sketch on 52g Tomoe River paper
Once I saw what today’s ink was, I broke out my brand new and ridiculously pink and glittery (with some grey to tone it down) Franklin Christoph Model 03 Iterium Sedona Spa fountain pen, with the Nagahara fine cursive italic nib and embraced the delightful joy that is this ink. I’m glad that Diamine showed some restraint and didn’t try to glitterify this ink, as the result would have been too over the top and somehow also a bit banal. As it is they created an ink that I am tempted to add to my collection, even though I’m not normally a fan of pink inks.
Day 7’s ink is Diamine Alpine, it’s a dark grey green with green shimmer in it, and it’s delightful.
Diamine Alpine bottle.
The Col-o-Ring swab shows off some of the shading properties of this ink. It really reminds me of Diamine Umber, one of my favourite Diamine inks, with an additional pizzaz of sparkles.
Diamine Alpine swab on a col-o-ring
Like Diamine Umber, Diamine Alpine is a fun ink to sketch with, and should work particularly well on cream coloured paper. Here is a sketch on tomoe river paper, where you can see the shading and a bit of the shimmer:
Diamine Alpine on Tomoe River paper 52g
The shimmer here is subtle, which works well with this muted shade of green. It doesn’t overshadow the shading properties of this ink, but rather adds to it. The result is interesting and festive – a worthy addition to the Diamine Christmas ink lineup.
Diamine Ghost is day 6’s ink. It’s a wonderfully shading bluish grey, a close kin to the phenomenal Diamine Earl Grey.
Diamine Ghost
Ghost is on the light side of greys, although not light enough to be unreadable in this fine nibbed Diplomat Aero. It is probably not the best for cream coloured paper, but on white paper it works well enough:
Col-o-Ring swab of Diamine Ghost
Ghost really shines on Tomoe River paper, as its shading properties are really prominent here. I had a lot of fun sketching this baby ruru (morepork) on this 52g original Tomoe River paper notebook:
Baby owls are the best
I love grey inks so I am definitely going to buy a bottle of this no – it’s a bluish grey shading ink, what’s not to love?
Inkvent day 5 ink is Diamine Spiced Apple, a red chameleon ink.
Diamine Spiced Apple bottle
Like Solar Storm, another chameleon ink from this year’s Inkvent, Spiced Apple is difficult to photograph.
Diamine Spiced Apple swab on Col-o-Ring
Spiced Apple is a bright red ink with chameleon shimmer that makes it look golden brown from some angles, blue green or bright red from others. The left side of this apple sketch looks golden brown, which is why it came out darker in this photo.
Diamine Spiced Apple on 52g Tomoe River paper
I don’t normally use red inks, as I associate the colour with editing, not writing. However, the chameleon effect really does make this ink particularly appealing.
It’s Day 4 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar. What’s behind today’s door?
Day 4’s door
It’s Diamine Spruce – a saturated dark green that’s (unfortunately) scented.
Diamine Spruce bottle.
The ink is a dark viridian green with a red sheen and relatively little shading, as it is so saturated. It also showed a troubling tendency to stain pens, perhaps because it is so saturated or perhaps because of the pigments involved. It’s not a super sheening ink, which means that drying times are long but acceptable, but it will feather on even normally fountain pen friendly paper.
Diamine Spruce swab on a Col-o-Ring
Diamine Spruce is a very Christmas appropriate ink, and I’d have no issue with it if it wasn’t scented. Diamine doesn’t normally make scented inks and I don’t like scented inks, which means that this is not only the first scented Diamine ink that I own, it’s the first scented ink that I own. Did Diamine even make scented inks before this Inkvent calendar? I don’t like scented inks enough to even check.
Diamine Spruce on Tomoe river 52g paper
I filled a Lamy Safari with a medium nib with Diamine Spruce, and the air freshener smell it gives off is so unpleasant that I’ll probably dump the ink in the converter right after writing this review. It’s not an overpowering scent, but it is present, and I don’t like it. It reminds me of hospital toilets and car air-fresheners, and not in a good way. Definitely not an ink that I would ever buy or use.
What does day 3 of the 2022 Inkvent calendar bring?
Door 3
Something new and exciting: a chameleon ink:
Diamine Solar Storm
Day 3’s ink is Diamine Solar Storm, a dark purple chameleon ink. What is a chameleon ink, you may ask? I did too. When I saw the label on the bottle I thought that there must be some new ink trend that started when I was abroad and I missed it. Was that the new name for the hue shifting inks that Sailor popularised?
Solar Storm swab on a Col-o-Ring
No it was not. A quick internet search revealed that chameleon inks were a new kind of shimmer ink from Diamine, first offered in the Inkvent 2022 calendar. What is special about them is that the mica in them is very fine, and so the shimmer shifts colour as you tilt the page and view your writing from different angles.
Diamine Solar Storm on tomoe river 52g (original paper)
Very cool and impossible to photograph (you’ll perhaps get a feel for the effect in a video review). There are angles where you can barely see the shimmer, and others where it is dazzling, angles where it’s golden green and others where it’s silvery. The ink itself is a wonderfully dark, dusky and rich bluish-purple with a good amount of shading. Even without the chameleon effect it would have been lovely.
Diamine Solar Storm compared with Diamine Stargazer from 2021’s Inkvent
Comparing Solar Storm with last year’s Stargazer, there’s something more subtle about the chameleon effect that makes it more appealing to me than the shimmering and sheening Stargazer. It may be the newness bias, and it may be that I’ve grown tired of blue inks with lots of red sheen, but if chameleon inks are the next big thing, I’m not against them. Solar Storm is a fantastic ink, with a very peculiar name choice for a Christmas themed calendar. However, if it will clean out well out of my Pilot Metropolitan cursive medium fountain pen, then it is definitely going on the shopping list for a full bottle.
Day 2’s ink is Diamine Yule Log, a brown shimmer ink. There’s a lot of coppery shimmer in this ink, and a good amount of shading. I filled a Lamy Studio fine nibbed fountain pen with this ink, and all the writing samples here are done with that:
Diamine Yule Log on Col-o-Ring
Yule Log is a sketcher’s ink in terms of hue: if it didn’t have shimmer to it, I could see myself sketching landscapes with it. You can see how close it is in shade and shading to De Atramentis Urban Sienna, which is an excellent sketching ink. Yule Log tends a bit more to yellow and Urban Sienna tends a bit more to red, but they both look like classic inks for pen and ink sketching.
The coppery shimmer does add interest to Diamine Yule Log and it makes it more celebratory without being so much shimmer that you lose the character of the ink. It still shades beautifully, and has a warm richness to it even without the sparkles:
Yule Log sketch on Tomoe River paper 52g
I love that this ink is part of the Inkvent calendar, but I’m not so sure where it lives once Inkvent is over. Yule Log is dark enough to use in serious settings, but then it’s a shimmer ink, so maybe not something you want your colleagues to see you write meeting notes with. It isn’t festive enough to be your ink of choice for Christmas cards, and I’m not sure it has a place over any other ink for any other purpose. I’m sure that it’s going to be someone’s favourite ink somewhere, it’s just that I don’t think many people will be rushing off to buy a full bottle of it.
Writing at Large 