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Color collecting
4 Jan 2022 04:50 pmI just noticed that the fountain pen ink blog Mountain of Ink (I think run by a blogger named Kelli, but I prefer to use the blog name as it's a unique identifier) made a post to celebrate her 1700th ink review in which she recommends her "favorites" in every color category. Mountain of Ink - 1700 Inks! (She uses the color categories typically used in fountain pen fandom: black, blue black, gray, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, teal, and purple. Some also add "turquoise", which refers specifically to my all-time favorite family of shades - in the realm of colors that people think of when discussing the stone turquoise, but towards the bluer end of them. Turquoise, the stone, also comes in colors that the fountain pen world would class as "teal".) I say "favorites" with quotation marks because she picks up to eighteen shades of each of these groups, which... I mean... I don't disbelieve that she uses them all frequently if she says she does, although I do know I never used ink fast enough to have done that even when I was drawing like 8 hours a day for several months. I just personally find the use of "favorite" a little bemusing for a group that size, which is surely more than the total number of inks of a single color family that many people even own or want to own. She also has quite a few color samples in her favorites that are near enough to identical that, okay, fair enough, you're bound to like both colors since they're THE SAME, but surely nobody needs to own both of them.
ANYWAY, as I was saying, I was really excited to see this post because I like Mountain of Ink's ink reviews. She has a broad enough range of samples that they tend to cover any ink I might be curious about. And if I am curious about it, her reviews are typically the best review of that ink out there because she takes good photos of the ink in washes, drops, and writing in all the main sizes on all the popular fountain pen papers, and then compares them side by side to the most similar other inks she has. The side by side comparisons are the most useful way to (a) avoid accidentally getting identical inks when you don't want to and (b) determine exactly which shades you like the best.
But this reminds me of nail polish fandom. I had an interest in nail polish colors and have had a shoeboxfull or more of them for ten years or so, and as a result I read a lot of nail polish reviews because that's the best way to find good pictures of the color so you can tell what it actually looks like... that and the side by side comparisons testing for duplicates ("dupes" as the nail polish fandom call them), because in many people's opinion, you don't need two of the identical color. But many nail polish reviewers had a hilariously different definition of "dupes" to mine. Nail polish bloggers will often say that colors aren't "dupes" if you can distinguish them with the naked eye, but in a practical sense, my standard for individuality in nail polish is a lot higher than that. My need for color specificity on my nails is not at the level it would be for a professional graphic artist specifying shades for a website or a logo. If I look down at my hand and it looks like it did last week, I'm gonna get bored, even if I know that I could distinguish the shades with the naked eye if I happened to have them side by side to inspect.
And I do feel a certain acquisitiveness, in ink as well as in nail polish, towards the colors themselves, simply because they're pretty, and an urge as a result to just like... obtain and collect them... in a way that isn't, erm, necessarily that connected to the practical use that I have for the substances in question. (I've only ever used like AT MOST two nail polishes in a week, but usually I can't be bothered to even use one every three weeks, so most of the polishes in the box are pretty much just sitting there emitting somewhat worryingly toxic fumes all the time.) I had a similar issue with a need to acquire All the Best Colors of eyeshadow a few years ago, when even at peak eyeshadow use, I mostly only really wanted to use like... maybe five or six shades?
You really can waste a LOT of money if you feel the need to acquire a full range of all the best shades in every single product you come in contact with that colors things regardless of if you're going to use those colors or not.
The eyeshadow isn't hurting anybody being there unused since I mostly can't be bothered to use it... but I still might at least use SOME of it in the future, although it's all passed its use-by date and technically should be thrown away I think. But since nail polish both takes up storage space I don't have and emits smells that are not pleasant and technically a bit toxic, I did decide to sort of... downsize it. I found, though, that even though I am fine intellectually with the idea of only ever using one or two shades of it again, it was really hard to pick out ones to throw away. When you look at a little bottle of lacquer in isolation, it always looks so pretty! So the shoebox is still mostly full. (And a hazard to foot traffic, because it's temporarily without a shelf spot.)
ANYWAY, as I was saying, I was really excited to see this post because I like Mountain of Ink's ink reviews. She has a broad enough range of samples that they tend to cover any ink I might be curious about. And if I am curious about it, her reviews are typically the best review of that ink out there because she takes good photos of the ink in washes, drops, and writing in all the main sizes on all the popular fountain pen papers, and then compares them side by side to the most similar other inks she has. The side by side comparisons are the most useful way to (a) avoid accidentally getting identical inks when you don't want to and (b) determine exactly which shades you like the best.
But this reminds me of nail polish fandom. I had an interest in nail polish colors and have had a shoeboxfull or more of them for ten years or so, and as a result I read a lot of nail polish reviews because that's the best way to find good pictures of the color so you can tell what it actually looks like... that and the side by side comparisons testing for duplicates ("dupes" as the nail polish fandom call them), because in many people's opinion, you don't need two of the identical color. But many nail polish reviewers had a hilariously different definition of "dupes" to mine. Nail polish bloggers will often say that colors aren't "dupes" if you can distinguish them with the naked eye, but in a practical sense, my standard for individuality in nail polish is a lot higher than that. My need for color specificity on my nails is not at the level it would be for a professional graphic artist specifying shades for a website or a logo. If I look down at my hand and it looks like it did last week, I'm gonna get bored, even if I know that I could distinguish the shades with the naked eye if I happened to have them side by side to inspect.
And I do feel a certain acquisitiveness, in ink as well as in nail polish, towards the colors themselves, simply because they're pretty, and an urge as a result to just like... obtain and collect them... in a way that isn't, erm, necessarily that connected to the practical use that I have for the substances in question. (I've only ever used like AT MOST two nail polishes in a week, but usually I can't be bothered to even use one every three weeks, so most of the polishes in the box are pretty much just sitting there emitting somewhat worryingly toxic fumes all the time.) I had a similar issue with a need to acquire All the Best Colors of eyeshadow a few years ago, when even at peak eyeshadow use, I mostly only really wanted to use like... maybe five or six shades?
You really can waste a LOT of money if you feel the need to acquire a full range of all the best shades in every single product you come in contact with that colors things regardless of if you're going to use those colors or not.
The eyeshadow isn't hurting anybody being there unused since I mostly can't be bothered to use it... but I still might at least use SOME of it in the future, although it's all passed its use-by date and technically should be thrown away I think. But since nail polish both takes up storage space I don't have and emits smells that are not pleasant and technically a bit toxic, I did decide to sort of... downsize it. I found, though, that even though I am fine intellectually with the idea of only ever using one or two shades of it again, it was really hard to pick out ones to throw away. When you look at a little bottle of lacquer in isolation, it always looks so pretty! So the shoebox is still mostly full. (And a hazard to foot traffic, because it's temporarily without a shelf spot.)
