Van Dieman's Ink Sample Review, Part 1

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

I have a small treasure chest of Van Dieman's ink samples to review! Which means reveling in multicolored inky fingers for weeks, and sharing the joy with you all. Here is the first installment of three reviews of this line of inks.

First up is from their Hollywood series—Elizabeth's Violet Eyes, inspired by Elizabeth Taylor. It's a lovely balanced purple, not too warm or cool. It's well behaved and shows some nice shading. It's a wet ink with a longer dry time, and it survived with some faint lines remaining in the water drip test. This ink had some lovely chromatography, splitting from bright pink to magenta, to a bold turquoise. It's easily the most practical of the ones I reviewed for today, and while it's tame enough to be an everyday ink, it has a nice bit of excitement to it, too.

The next ink I tried was the Enchanted Woods Shimmer from the Midnight series. This one is a bright emerald green with a silver shimmer to it. It's not shy on the bling, either. You could probably use this ink to signal passing airplanes. This ink has great character, showing some shading even through all that shimmer. It has a slow dry time, no water resistance, and the chromatography shows a beautiful yellow-green-blue progression. The ink description indicates that it is supposed to have a red sheen in addition to the silver shimmer, but I could not get one to materialize, even where the ink pooled.

The third ink I tested somehow out-blings the Enchanted Woods. It's another from the Hollywood series, this one called Ruby Slippers. Wicked witches will no doubt be in hot pursuit of this ink. I don't recommend it for fountain pens, though, for several reasons. One, its very wet and feathers dramatically. Two, the particles settle almost immediately and require constant agitation to remain suspended. And three, it's highly water-resistant, and I'd be concerned about staining. Even in the ink description on the Vanness site it suggests dip and brush pens for this ink.

The last one I reviewed this week was the insanely gorgeous Huon Midwinter Festival, from their Tassie Seasons line. This ink is enchanting. It's a rich sepia with an antique gold shimmer that makes me think of pirates. The chromatography for this ink was like watching a fireworks display--or a bonfire. From char brown to smokey purple to bright orange and yellow--this is clearly a complex ink. However, I strongly advise against using this in a fountain pen unless it it one that is easy to disassemble and clean. I let my sample vial sit for some time while I waited to get to this review, and when I picked it up to use it, I could not get the shimmer particles to come away from the plastic wall of the vial. Even with shaking, they stayed stuck. I had to knock the vial against my desk several times to get the shimmer to disperse. I assumed it was because it had sat for a few weeks. So I set it back down while I reviewed the other inks. When I picked this one back up to review, the same thing happened again, even though it had been sitting for less than an hour. I don't think these particles will behave nicely in a pen feed. For dip pens or brushwork, though, this is one of the prettiest browns I've ever used.

I still have six other colors to review, but my impression so far of the Van Dieman's inks is that they are very good with color, and all-in with their shimmer, but they fall more into the category of art-supply inks than writing inks. Which is not a bad thing--but I don't know if that is their intention. I do know that I would not put two of these four into a fountain pen. And I also have concerns about being hunted by flying monkeys.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Diamine Marine Ink Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

For the past few months, I've been trying to introduce more green into my fountain pen ink rotation. I wouldn't say I'm going all green all the time, but I am trying to include more green at a slow pace during these cold months. The latest ink I've been trying was supposed to be in this green genre, but it turned out to be a little more blue than I anticipated! Despite that error on my side, Diamine Marine is still a gorgeous blue-green ink that pops off the page.

Before getting into all the specifics of this color, it's fair to point out that this, like all other Diamine inks I've used, is extremely well-behaved and easy to use. The color is bright and accurate to their marketing swatches, and the price is really hard to beat. There's a reason I have so many Diamine inks in my collection at this point: they just work so well.

Marine is primarily a green ink, but it has a heavy blue undertone that you can't ignore. Diamine classifies this as a turquoise ink, but I'm not sure I agree. Any color in the realm of turquoise, teal, aquamarine, blue-green, green-blue, or other popular mixtures are highly subjective when it comes to naming and identifying the colors. To me, Marine looks more teal, but there are certain natural turquoise colors in nature that look just like Marine as well. It's a spectrum, and that just means there isn't one right answer! In this case, just know that Marine is a green-blue color.

Questions of exact color aside, it's a gorgeous ink. I've really been enjoying using it because it makes me think of green (which is always a happy color to me), water, and also mint. The green is just light enough to bring out some mint comparisons, and the blue just adds a bit of depth to an otherwise flat color.

It's this additional depth of color that contributes to the minimal shading that this ink exhibits. Without the blue undertones, there wouldn't be much shading. Lucky for us, there's a good amount of color variation between light and dark strokes. This is more pronounced with larger nibs, but you can still see a good amount of variation with small or dry nibs.

One area that really surprised me with this ink is the dry time. I was anticipating something in the 15-second range, but I was really astonished when I discovered this ink was drying in the 5-10 second range depending on how wide/wet the nib stroke was. I'm still fairly shocked and impressed by this. It's hard to find any inks that dry that fast, let alone one with so much color saturation. If you're looking for a fast-drying ink and don't mine that it's a green-blue, this is a great place to start.

Like a lot of Diamine inks, you have several options regarding purchasing. With Marine, you can go for cartridges (box of 18), a 30ml bottle (my personal favorite), or an 80ml bottle.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Scribo Verde Mediterraneo Ink: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

Scribo ink arrives in a gorgeous, cloth-covered box. The box is substantial because the ink bottle is made of thick glass. Filled with ink it weighs a whopping 441 grams/15.5 ounces.

Verde Mediterraneo is a deep teal green with shading and a good amount of red/burgundy sheen. On my Col-o-dex card, you can see the various shades of the ink in the swab, the shading properties in the writing and swirl, and the sheen in the splats.

I tested the ink on white Rhodia dot-grid paper. It writes smoothly and demonstrates shading in all nib sizes. Although the ink dried super fast, it didn't seem dry when I wrote with it. In fact, it flowed quite nicely and is well saturated. It isn't waterproof.

Chromatography reveals a bit of pale yellow and ochre, turquoise and blue.

On MD Cotton Paper with my Handwritmic ruling pen you can see shading and sheen, especially where the ink pooled.

For a lengthier writing test, I used an MD Notebook Journal and my TWSBI Prussian Blue fitted with a Mark Bacas Predator nib. The ink was wet and flowed well. You can even see a bit of the red sheen.

I also drew a design modeled after a pattern by @mgemart_ on Instagram. This was done in my Galen Leather Tomoe River Journal. Again, the ink worked well on the paper, although you can see a difference between the left and right sides. The left side is more saturated (presumably because I had just inked the pen). The right side was completed the following day and is much lighter.

Scribo Verde Mediterraneo is an excellent dark teal ink. It reminds me most of Sailor Yama Dori, but the Scribo ink is much greener.

You can purchase this ink from Goldspot Pens ($39.00 for 90ml), although it is currently sold out. I would suggest trying a sample first just to make sure you like the color, since $39.00 is quite an investment. I suspect that price is partly due to the fancy glass bottle, which, by the way, is stackable with other Scribo bottles. I'm not sure how helpful that feature is (at least for saving space) since the bottles themselves are so massive.

(Goldspot provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)