Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 24

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 24 on the Diamine Inkvent calendar, which means that it’s Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

Day 24’s ink is Diamine Purple Bow, a “standard” dark purple. After dip testing this ink I filled a Pilot Metropolitan (medium nib) with it just to make sure that what I was seeing wasn’t a result of the dip test. It wasn’t. This ink has a lot of sheen, and should have been labeled a “sheen” ink.

Diamine Purple Bow is a deeply saturated, very dark purple ink that’s almost black. The magic is when you tilt the page and look at the sheen:

The golden sheen is especially visable on Tomer river paper, but it’s also noticable on Rhodia paper. I have no idea why Diamine Purple Bow wasn’t labeled as a sheen ink but it should have been. As it is, it’s an interesting ink that is dark enough to pass as a standard black on a cursory glance.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 23

It’s day 23 on the Diamine Inkvent calendar, and I love both the snowman and the inkwell snow-globe on today’s door.

Day 23’s ink is Diamine Roasted Chestnut, a standard sienna brown with a good amount of shading. It’s more reddish than the yellow ochre leaning Diamine Gingerbread and pretty close to Diamine Nutcracker, but a tad lighter and less red.

I love the shading and the colour of this ink, but I wish that Diamine had called it Chestnuts Roasted 🙂

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 22

Only 3 days left to the Diamine Inkvent calendar, and after yesterday’s wonderful Fire Embers I can’t wait to see what’s behind door 22.

Day 22 is Diamine Solstice a black ink with green shimmer. This is a charming combination, as the basic black ink is deep and saturated, and the green shimmer makes it come to life.

This looks like a fairly normal black, but tilt the page a bit and…

Party time! Subtle yet satisfying.

Here it is on Clairefontaine paper:

I love the combination, and I hope that Diamine will offer Solstice as part of their regular lineup.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 21

It’s day 21 in the Diamine Inkvent calendar and we’re down to the final five. Today’s door didn’t look promising but…

…day 21’s ink is not a blue, or a red, or a green! It’s Diamine Fire Embers, the orange I’ve been waiting for for the past 20 days, and one of the best and most practical oranges I’ve ever seen. How dare you call it “standard”, Diamine? This ink is exceptional!

Diamine Fire Embers is a dark, reddish orange that glows on the page, and dries dark enough to make it practical (i.e. readable). There’s a significant amount of shading while the ink is still wet, but it tones down a bit as the ink dries.

There’s still a good amount of shading to be had here.

On the Tomoe river paper above the shading is much more pronounced than on the Clairefontaine paper below, but that’s to be expected.

Less shading, even when viewed at an angle.

Diamine Fire Embers is one of the better inks in the calendar in my opinion, and I’m not even a fan of orange ink. It’s so cheerful and vibrant, it’s bound to make you smile as you use it, whether for letter writing or for cards.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 20

It’s day 20 in the Diamine Inkvent calendar, and there are only 5 days left. No wonder the 20 is underscored.

Day 20’s ink is Diamine Midnight Hour, a dark, indigo ink with sheen. Wait, blue with a sheen? Haven’t we been here before? Yes we have. Take a look for yourself:

This is Diamine Midnight Hour. It’s a very saturated dark blue/indigo ink with a reddish-purple sheen.

If the sheen looks familiar it’s because it’s the same sheen you saw on day 15’s Diamine Festive Cheer. Diamine Festive Cheer is practically Diamine Midnight Hour only a shade lighter:

Then again, Diamine Festive Cheer is day 4’s Diamine Polar Glow with a tad less red in the base ink and a tad more red in the sheen.

There’s bound to be some degree of similarity between inks, considering Diamine had to create 25 unique inks for this calendar, and three similar royal blues are more useful than three similar yellows (and better behaving in pens), so I’m not complaining. It’s just an interesting little game to see just how close they came to creating three bottles of the same ink with different names (I’m looking at you Lamy). If you place these samples side by side you can tell them apart, but if you’d be buying ink in a store you’d probably end up picking just one bottle and not all three. My personal favourite is Diamine Polar Glow, followed by Diamine Festive Cheer, with Diamine Midnight Hour last.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 19

It’s day 19, and we have a nice nib ornament, and a 19 that fooled me at first that it was a 12.

Day 19’s ink is Diamine Gingerbread, a standard ink that offers a nice amount of shading and is a welcome break from the red/green/blue streak. It’s a warm raw sienna colour that really evokes gingerbread.

Diamine Gingerbread is not the flashiest of inks, but it’s a nice, warm, honey brown colour that will really work well with cream coloured paper or cards. It’s also a colour that I’ll probably end up using for sketching, since it’s relatively close to raw sienna, already a staple in my watercolour palette.

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 7

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 5

What’s behind door number 5? Ink that has sheen, shimmer, or shading?

No. It’s a brown. *sigh*

Day 5’s ink is Diamine Triple Chocolate, which is a standard brown ink. Like really bog standard. The best part about this ink is its name.

I use brown and sepia inks for drawings, and I used to use Waterman Havana brown ink regularly at work, so I know that brown is one of those ink colours that offers perhaps the most opportunity to play with in terms of shade. It can be very dark, tend towards green or purple, have a reddish hue, or a golden one. Diamine has a great brown ink, called Chocolate Brown, as part of their standard lineup, and it is one of my favourites. It’s dark with golden highlights, and it shades like mad, but is dark enough to be acceptable for office use. So I was expecting a lot out of an ink called Diamine Triple Chocolate. Was it triple times as good as Diamine Chocolate Brown?

This was drawn on Tomoe River Paper with a vintage flex, italic Waterman nib, and yet there’s barely any shading. The dark spots are places that I went over more than one time.

No it was not. The shade isn’t as rich and dark as you’d expect from the name, it’s middle of the road in terms of its hue, and even what little shading was present wasn’t interesting or pronounced. It’s not a terrible ink, and so far this is the only ink in the Inkvent Calendar that I would fill a vintage pen with, but for a festive calendar, and with such a name, I expected a bit more.

Inktober 31: Happy Halloween!

The outline and cat were drawn with a Waterman Phileas (EF nib) and Noodler’s Heart of Darkness (which I haven’t used in years, no idea why), and the hat and clothes were filled in with a Tombow Fudenosuke dual sided brush pen.

It was a fun challenge, and I really pushed myself this year to try new and different things. Can’t wait for next year’s Inktober!

Inktober 5: Tel Aviv Marina Boats

Parker Vacumatic Oversize with Pilot Iroshizuku Shin Kai.

Writing at Large

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Tag: Fountain Pens