Happy New Year! 2026 Edition
Have a happy new year! Here’s hoping that 2026 will be much better than 2025 was.
Here are a few recent sketches (mostly) from my Stillman and Birn pocket beta notebook.
Have a creative new year!
Tag: sketching
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 25
The final day! The day we’ve all been waiting for! The day with a full bottle of ink in the colour of this year’s calendar (i.e. teal)! And they let the resident dad on the team name it…
Day 25’s ink is Diamine Myrrh the Merrier. I told you it was named by a dad – and a dad that’s very pleased with himself right now 🙂
It’s a shimmer and sheen teal ink, with blue shimmer and red-purple sheen.
This ink is pretty, it’s got character and shimmer and sheen – but thankfully it’s still a teal ink. You can see the lovely base colour beyond all the pizzazz.
I have been using Myrrh the Merrier for my journaling and general writing for the past three days, and it flows well for a shimmer and sheen ink. Yes, if you leave it uncapped for a while you’ll have a hard start, but for a sheen and shimmer ink it’s been impressively well behaved.
You can see the sheen, but you can also see the ink colour.
This year’s final bear is Candy by June Kendall, a one of a kind British artist bear.
As opposed to last year’s day 25 ink which was disappointing and an ink that I don’t ever see myself using, this year’s Myrrh the Merrier ink is delightful and actually fun to use.
That’s all for the individual ink reviews for this year’s inkvent. In a day or two I’ll post my summary post, discussing the calendar as a whole and highlighting some of my favourites.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 24
Day 24’s ink is Diamine Antler, a raw umber (i.e. brown) pigment ink. This is the perfect classic shade of ink for sketching, and I can’t wait to use it with my watercolours.
Diamine Antler won’t be a favourite for everyone, being a brown ink, but it’s a useful colour for sketching, and it’s an interesting brown. It’s “flat” in terms of shading (or in this case, lack thereof), but the colour itself has a hint of red in it, and yet isn’t a strictly warm colour. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve used raw umber in sketching you’ll know what I mean.
Today’s bear is Braeburn, the only bear that I’ve ever bought online. He was part of a limited edition series that Dean’s Rag Book Co (my favourite bear makes, now defunct) issued, with each bear themed around a species of apple. This fellow is Braeburn:
I will be testing out Diamine Antler with some watercolours. I think that it could be a good ink to have in rotation – provided I don’t already have a similar pigment ink on hand.
Did you like Diamine Antler or was it too boring and brown for you?
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 23
Day 23’s ink is Diamine Let it Snow, a turquoise ink with chameleon shimmer. It’s a lovely ink (turquoise is my favourite, and it’s utterly appropriate for this year’s inkvent) with some nice shading as a bonus.
Here’s a closeup on the magical chameleon effect:
I had issues with leaking with this ink. I’m not sure if it’s the ink or the pen, but the result was very messy. I’ll be keeping an eye out on this one, and maybe testing this ink a different pen. I tested in a fine nibbed Lamy Safari that I’ve had and used for years without issues. In any case, the ink itself is nice, and it shades even in a fine nib:
Today’s bear is a German bear from Clemens Bears – a relatively big manufacturer. He’s number 667 out of 777 and he’s called Keoki. I love his puppy like face and his paper hat.
Setting aside the leaking issues, I love Diamine Let it Snow. I think the colour is perfect, the name is perfect and the chameleon effect and the shading make it an interesting ink. What did you think? Did you have flow issues with this ink?
Diamine Invkvent 2025 Day 22
Day 22’s ink is Diamine Pineapple Spritz, a mustard coloured pigment chameleon ink. While I guess that the name is appropriate (I don’t drink so I’m not very familiar with cocktails) I really wish that it was just a pigment ink and not also a chameleon one.
If Pineapple Spritz was a pigment ink it would be an interesting ink to sketch with. Yellow tends to disappear in watercolours, but also still have enough presence to affect the drawing – a bit like red does. As it’s a chameleon ink as well it’s going nowhere near my watercolours and my brushes. The last thing I need is glitter stuck on everything forever.
Since I wasn’t going to use this for sketching and because Diamine Pineapple Spritz is both a pigment and a chameleon ink, plus it’s yellow (which tends to crystalise), I just opted to test this by dipping a Pilot Metropolitan medium nib in it, rather than filling the pen and dealing with cleaning it later. Because it’s a mustard yellow it’s fairly legible, and would work decently well for greeting cards and highlighting things. In that case though I’d prefer it to be chameleon only, as the pigment property doesn’t add much and it will make it more difficult to clean out the pen.
Today’s bear is also a Holbins Bear, hand made in England. Her name is Fiji and her sweater has a tiny crochet flower on it.
I personally don’t find a need for an ink in the shade of Diamine Pineapple Spritz. It would have been nice to try it out as a sketching ink if it was only a pigment and not a chameleon one, but as it is I don’t ever see myself using it. What do you think?
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 21
Day 21’s ink is Diamine Chaos. That’s right – Diamine Chaos. This is a dark purple, almost black ink, that’s “extreme sheen” – which means you basically see green sheen everywhere. I’m flummoxed by both this ink and Diamine Energy back in day 2. They both feel like Halloween inks more than Inkvent inks.
This ink isn’t brown, but the effect of so much golden-green sheen makes it appear to be brown instead of the really quite interesting deep purple that it is.
There must be someone in Diamine with a particular kind of humor if they included this ink in the calendar, and then called it “Chaos”. It’s a bit of a cynical outlook on this time of year, but I’m here for it.
How much sheen is “extreme sheen”? A lot:
Today’s bear is called Flippy. He’s made in England by Hoblins Bears, and he’s tiny and adorable.
Diamine Chaos feels a bit out of place in an Inkvent calendar. I wish that it didn’t have the extreme sheen effect, because the base ink colour is actually really interesting. As it is, you barely get to glimpse it under all of the golden green sheen, and because the ink is so saturated it will likely bleed through and show through all but the thickest paper. In short – it’s not an ink that I see myself purchasing.
Are you a fan of Chaos’s sheen? What did you think of this ink?
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 20
Day 20’s ink is Diamine Ambiance, a tomato red or orange-red chameleon ink with some shading. It’s an interesting colour, but also a peculiar one. It’s somewhere between red and orange, and for a chameleon ink with some shading to it, it’s somehow quite… flat.
Inks in this hue tend to have either zero shading or rather wild and striking shading, and Diamine Ambiance falls closer to the zero shading area.
I’m not in love with the colour either. Diamine Ambience seems to lack conviction to me – either be a red, or be an orange, don’t be a wishy-washy in-between-er. I’m also not sure where the name comes from and how it’s related to the holiday/winter theme.
Today’s bear is Pumpkin, by Maddy Aldis. It’s tiny but very heavy – filled with lead shot.
I used a Pilot Metropolitan with a CM nib, and yet the flow of Diamine Ambience wasn’t great. Inks in the yellow/red/orange range tend to have somewhat problematic properties – they tend to crystalize, for example. I’m slightly worried about this ink and I doubt that I’ll have much use for it so I’ll likely be cleaning it out of the pen soon. Overall, I’m not a fan of Diamine Ambience.
Did you like it?
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 19
Day 19’s ink is Diamine Overcast, a light celadon blue with pink hints. It’s a standard ink with some nice shading but it’s very, very light.
I used a Lamy AL Star with a fine nib and it was a struggle to read what I wrote at times. This is a lovely ink colour that needs a very wide, very generous nib to lay down enough ink for it to be easily readable on the page.
There is a potential for some nice dual shading with a generous enough nib – the swab clearly shows pink undertones that make this a very beautiful ink. They are completely invisible with a fine, and I’d guess also with a medium nib. This ink wants a stub, italic, double-broad nib or wider.
Because it’s such a light ink, it lends itself well to delicate shading. It is, however, not an ink I will ever see myself using regularly because it’s so light. This is one of the least practical inks in this year’s Inkvent.
Today’s bear is Sammy from Sambrook Bears. He’s a nice, tiny British bear and I actually like his sweater. I think it fits his personality.
I think Diamine Overcast is a lovely ink that I wouldn’t recommend to anybody, because it’s so light. There are those who will find use for it, particularly in wide nibs, but if you use medium nibbed fountain pens or finer, then you would do well to select a more legible ink.
What do you think? Would you use Diamine Overcast?
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 18
Day 18’s ink is Diamine Laurel, a dark, saturated blue-green “extreme sheen” ink. It has a LOT of red sheen and it takes ages to dry (although I will say that the TWSBI Eco 1.1 nib lays down a generous amount of ink, which didn’t help things).
Look at the amount of sheen on this ink – Diamine isn’t kidding when it says “extreme sheen”. You can see the lovely ink colour when you’re writing with it, but the minute it dries you can barely see it under all that reddish-purple sheen.
I used a new fountain pen to test out this ink – a TWSBI Eco Serpentine and Bronze fountain pen with a 1.1 nib. I really like the combination of the bronze, the dark green, and Diamine Laurel. They work well together.
The sheen really gave my camera a hard time, so this photo looks smudged. In any case on Apica CD paper (coated, fountain pen friendly paper) Diamine Laurel took a very long time to dry, so if you’re someone who tends to smudge wet ink, be aware of this.There was no bleed through or show through to the other side of the page.
Here’s a closeup of just how much sheen there is in this ink:
Everywhere the ink pools, red sheen glows through:
Today’s bear is Milan, made by Bear in Mind. He’s a nice but slightly worried looking bear.
Red and green work well together, especially in this time of year, and Diamine Laurel is perfect for an Inkvent calendar just on that merit. It’s an attractive ink, especially when combined with a generous nib and paper like Apica CD and Tomoe River Paper. You want a coated paper to make the most of this ink, and you need to take care not smudge this ink while it’s wet. The end results do glow on the page though, so I think that Diamine Laurel is worth the effort. What do you think?
Diamine Inkvent 2025 Day 17
Day 17’s ink is Diamine Gala a lavender purple standard ink with some shading. It’s on the lighter side of inks, so you’ll probably want to use it in a more substantial nib than the EF TWSBI nib that I used to test it with.
I just received an order of some TWSBI ECOs in the cool new colours they’ve started to issue, so I took the opportunity to use my new TWSBI ECO onyx and plum fountain pen to test out Diamine Gala.
So you can see today’s ink bottle, today’s pen and the mess that swabbing inks has made of my Rhodia dot pad. I may do something with this wreck of a page before I toss it out.
I like Diamine Gala. There have been other inks like it in previous inkvents, but there’s something calming and nice about this ink colour, and I appreciate the fact that it’s a standard ink.
Today’s bear isn’t a collector’s bear, it’s just a bear that I felt like adding to the collection. I bought him on a whim in a small toy store in Paris, years and years ago.
While I don’t see myself needing a full bottle of Diamine Gala, I do like the colour enough to enjoy writing with it even though it’s on the light side (I sound like a Sith Lord now, I know). I’m wondering why the name was chosen though. Perhaps the colour evoked a gala dress colour in someone’s mind?
Writing at Large 