cimorene

Preamble:

I've been into calligraphy for a few years and this makes about 8 months into fountain pens and fountain pen ink. I rely on other people's reviews of ink before I buy a new color, and I'm grateful to everyone who makes photographs of their samples because I scrutinize them, but they don't always have exactly the information I'm looking for. Also it was fun. I will probably do this regularly.

I bought Diamine Marine due to a review that named it for exceptional shading, which it certainly has, particularly if you write with a broad nib like the 1.1 mm stub I used. It’s a vivid color that I fell for at first line, which works for me in blocks of text, where I don’t like the ink to be too bright generally, but also works for fun, eye-catching doodles and lettering that call for a little pizzaz.

At the top of the page you see spatters of the pure ink over the title; under that, some lines and waves painted with a detail brush straight from the bottle; some strokes and crosshatches, and short writing samples in block capitals, italic calligraphy, and ordinary print and cursive. Water droplets were sprinkled over the bottom of the page, and the drawings on the left were done with pen first, then detail brush in water.

I did not do any drying time tests or smudge tests because those aren't factors that I consider, and I didn't do any comparison swatches, although I find them very relevant, because I don't have any colors that are extremely similar.

I find this ink pleasant to write with, wet but not extremely so, and very smooth in the Kaweco Sport, although almost every ink I have tried in a Kaweco Sport has written smoothly. The lighter J Herbin Diabolo Menthe, for example, is dry enough by comparison to occasionally annoy me when I wrote with it in the same pen, although not dry enough to make writing so difficult that I gave up and switched inks.

These photos are in natural light, which is good, but it's direct late afternoon sun and a bit glarey and yellowish. Hopefully practice will improve my photos-of-ink-on-paper technique.