Tag: Drawing

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 16

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

It’s day 16, and we’re going back to the weird and wild part of the calendar.

Day 16’s ink is Diamine Seasons Greetings and its a gem. It’s a dark teal green with a ton of shading and purple sheen.

Look how pretty it is! It’s such a beautiful and unique colour, it deserves the widest possible italic nib you own and Tomoe River paper to enjoy it to the fullest.

Look at that sheen! If that isn’t festive, I don’t know what is. I would totally buy a 30ml bottle of this ink.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 15

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

Day 15 is perched on a branch and looks a bit like it. I can’t say this enough: I really love the design of this calendar. It’s so well thought out, beautiful and clever.

Day 15’s ink is Diamine Festive Cheer, a deep, royal blue ink with a purple-golden sheen. It offers less shading and less sheen than Diamine Polar Glow.

It’s a beautiful ink, but it’s a little underwhelming when compared to Diamine Polar Glow, and even the lighter Diamine Jack Frost.

This is a saturated colour, so as much as I trust Diamine, I’m hesitant to use it in vintage pens, just from a cleaning out and staining perspective, but it’s still a nice ink that will probably one of the first ones I finish from the set, just because it’s a pretty practical colour.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 14

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

Day 14 has little twigs and leaves growing out from it! So cute.

Day 14’s ink is Diamine Jack Frost, and like last Sunday’s Gold Star Diamine went all out with this one. It shimmers, it sheens, it shades, it pops – it’s everything an ink could ever do, people.

Look at all that glitter!

See that bright smudge on the bottom? That’s all glitter.

This is an ink that you’re going to want to really, really shake before you fill your pen and before every use.

On a Kanso Sasshi 3.5” x 5.5” Tomoe River Paper notebook with what Pelikan laughingly calls a medium nib you can see the sheen immediately. Wherever the ink pools you’ll see a reddish purple halo. There’s so much of it that it obscures a lot of the shading, but there’s still a lot of that going around.

I’m not great at photographing glitter, but believe me the whole drawing was shimmering like the tree in the centre. The particles are silvery blue, and they’re very, very pretty.

I would have liked Diamine Jack Frost to be a turquoise or aqua ink at its base, but it still is a beautiful ink that’s anything but your standard, run-of-the-mill blue.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 13

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

I like the nib ornament above today’s door. I wasn’t expecting Diamine to go all out on day 13, but I actually think that today’s ink was pretty interesting.

Day 13’s ink is Diamine Mulled Wine, a standard ink that’s a burgundy red with brown elements that remind me a little of Diamine Oxblood.

You really get the wine quality with this ink, but also cinnamon and cloves, which what makes Mulled Wine such a great name for this ink. It’s a perfect winter colour, and it shades beautifully. I’m kind of glad that Diamine let this ink stand on its own and didn’t add shimmer or sheen to it. It’s the most interesting red ink of the bunch so far, and that’s saying a lot for a calendar with so many red inks.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 12

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

It’s day 12 of the Diamine Inkvent calendar, and a snowman is holding the sign, so it must be good, right?

Day 12’s ink is Diamine Noel, a burgundy red ink with sheen. I liked the colour, as it’s warm and rich and interesting, with a lot of shading, but I was underwhelmed by the sheen, even on Tomoe River paper.

I used a Pelikan Pelikano medium nib for this, and I really laid down a good amount of ink, and I barely saw any sheen. That was so weird that after drawing the outline of the flower, I filled in the petals, and then drew the two baubles below and I still mostly just saw shading. This is not what I expect from an ink marked as a “sheen” ink, but I like the colour enough to not care too much about it.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 11

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

It’s magical day 11 on the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, and… we’re back to standard inks.

Day 11’s ink is Diamine Elf, a standard green ink that shades nicely and is more bright and cheerful than Diamine Mistletoe.

Even with a Lamy Safari fine nib on Clairefontaine paper you can see the shading. On Tomoe River paper the shading is more pronounced and the green is more vibrant.

I like Diamine Elf because it’s a nice shade of green, but it’s one of the least unique inks in the calendar. Sometimes you need a little calm in the midst of the shiny, shimmering storm.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 9

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

It’s day 9 of the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, and Diamine has toned back the shimmer and shine and gone back to standard inks for their Monday offering.

Day 9’s ink is Diamine Nutcracker, a slightly warmer, lighter and more interesting brown than Diamine Triple Chocolate.

Of course I drew a squirrel. What else would I draw?

Diamine Nutcracker shades a lot, and has reddish highlights to it. There’s a slight green sheen to it on Tomoe river paper, as you can see from the closeup below, but most of its charm is from its raw umber to burnt sienna shading.

If this ink would have been waterproof, it would have been a staple in my sketching kit. As it is, I’ll probably use it for ink sketches only, maybe with a slight wash. It’s a versatile and warm brown that I like much better than Diamine Triple Chocolate (even though Triple Chocolate has a better name).

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 7

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

I almost missed the 7, it was so well disguised as a candy cane. I’m a little sorry that Diamine didn’t go punny and put Diamine Candy Cane behind this door.

Instead, Day 7’s ink is Diamine Mistletoe. This is a darker, greyish green that’s labeled as “standard” but shades pretty well.

This was drawn on a Kanso Sasshi 3.5” x 5.5” Tomoe River Paper notebook using a Pelikan Pelikano. The colour reminds me a little of Rohrer and Klingner’s Emma SketchINK, Diamine Evergreen and even Diamine Umber. I plan on using this ink for sketches, maybe even opening it up a bit with water, we’ll see. This is bound to be one of the less unique colours in the calendar but also one of the more “useful” ones. This is also one of the few inks in the set that I’d trust around vintage pens.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 4

Diamine Inkvent Calendar is an advent calendar with a tiny (7ml) bottle of ink behind 24 windows, and a larger, 30ml, bottle of ink behind the 25th window. All the inks are limited edition, and only available through this calendar. You can read more about the calendar here.

Day 4’s window isn’t exactly aligned with the printing, but you get a cute snowman with it, so who cares?

The day 4 ink is Diamine Polar Glow, which is a royal blue ink that has sheen. How much sheen you ask? Well…

There’s so much red in that gloriously rich blue. I used a vintage italic Waterman ideal nib, and this was drawn on a Kanso Sasshi 3.5” x 5.5” Tomoe River Paper notebook, so this is probably close to maximum sheen, but still, it’s impressive.

Even as a standard ink, Diamine Polar Glow pops. The blue is deep, rich, and yet shades a lot, from cyan to royal blue (you can see it in the leaves in the drawing above). The red sheen just adds a little extra zing to it, without overshadowing the already good qualities of the ink.

This is an ink designed for wide, broad, italic, flex nibs that lay down a lot of ink. It really shows it’s best properties on Tomoe River paper, but even on Rhodia/Clairefontaine paper I could see sheen in every letter (using the same broad italic nib).

Would I buy a bottle of this, if Diamine offered it? Probably yes, since it’s dark enough for office use, but is also more interesting and appealing than a run-of-the-mill dark blue.