Tono & Lims is a Japanese brand in collaboration with a Korean ink company.
Strawberry Ice is a pastel pink ink with an average flow. Although light, I find it readable even in dim light. On Midori MD paper, there is shading, no sheen, no feathering and no bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Diamine Ancient Copper is a burnt orange ink with a wet flow, some shading and no sheen. In places where the ink had pooled, it looked brown.
I enjoy the wet flow and the colour of the ink. The orange-brown range of this ink makes me think of rust, but ancient copper sounds better than rusty metal, doesn’t it?
On Muji Planting Tree paper, there is shading, no sheen, a tiny bit of feathering and no bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This was written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
In 2020, Taccia launched the Jeans collection, a range of inks inspired by the colour of jeans. This is the Dark Washed Jeans ink from the collection.
The ink is an unsaturated mid-range blue with beautiful shading. There is no feathering and no bleedthrough on this paper. I think the shade of blue matches the colour of blue jeans. Bravo to Taccia for nailing the colour so accurately.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Color Traveler is an ink brand from Hiroshima, Japan. Their inks are usually given names related in some way to Hiroshima and Japan.
Takehara is a city located in Hiroshima. With large bamboo forests growing on the outskirts, it is no wonder that Takehara has made bamboo their official tree in 1978. Bamboo is also the official special product of Takehara and it can also be found in the city’s insignia. There are also bamboo-related festivals held in Takehara: the Takehara Bamboo Festival in May and the Takehara Shokei-no-michi Candle Festival (where bamboo candles are placed around the historic preservation district) in October.
This is a bright green ink with an average flow. I find this ink easy to clean out of the pen. On Midori MD paper, there is shading, no sheen, no feathering and no bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Diamine Aurora Borealis is a colour was chosen by the members of Reddit’s fountain pen community (/r/fountainpens). This was the second ink that Diamine created for them.
The ink is a teal colour with an average flow, some shading and very little sheen the only appears on certain papers. On New Chiffon Cream paper, there is a little sheen only in the dots of “i” or fullstops. There is no feathering or bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Slight sheen
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Lennon Tool Bar is a Taiwanese company founded in 2014. Their focus is on producing and promoting the craft of indigo dying. Then they started producing fountain pen inks, and were known for their beautiful blue inks.
This ink was part of the Spring 2020 limited edition ink named after the Celastrina Sugitanii Shirozui butterfly found in Taiwan. “杉谷琉灰蝶” is the Chinese name of the butterfly and it is also printed on the bottle label. It is a pretty long name for a small butterfly that grows up to 1.4cm ~ 1.7cm (0.55″ ~ 0.67″). Let’s break the name up, shall we?
The first word “杉” refers to a type of coniferous tree found in parts of Asia and the second word “谷” means a valley. Together, the first two words gives an idea of the environment the butterflies are found in.
The next word “琉” likely refers to “琉璃” which is an ancient precious stone. While nobody knows for certain what exactly the stone is, it probably referred to lapis lazuli. Only the male butterfly displays a bluish purple colour on its wing, giving it the “琉璃” name. The female butterfly, on the other hand, has wing colours of white and brown. When resting with their wings folded up, both sexes display a white underwing with black dots.
The next two words “灰蝶” refers to the Lycaenidae family which Celastrina Sugitanii Shirozui belongs to.
This is a dark purple ink with a very wet flow. On Leuchtturm1917 paper, there is hardly any shading, no sheen, a lot of feathering and a lot of bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
A lookback at what I drew using fountain pens last year. It felt that I drew way less in 2021 compared to 2020. Most of last year is trying to cope with the changes in both my personal and work life so perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.
Below are the drawings I did in 2021, with additional comments below.
This drawing was mainly to test the ink, what it would look like when I shaded large areas. The shading looks different from other inks I’ve tried, giving it a unique textured look. I think it worked well here to invoke the look of wool.
I found the overlapping stairs confusing to look at so I tried to shade them in an attempt to make it less confusing for the eye. Did it work? Maybe a little. But I still think this is a picture that would work better in colours than monotone.
I had fun playing with the fude nib in the first half of 2021. I tried writing with it but didn’t like how it made my handwriting looked. So I’ve mainly used it for drawing.
I drew less in 2021 so the fude nib remained unused for long periods. I eventually cleaned it out and now it is sitting empty. Perhaps I will ink it up again this year.
When I tried to write with it, I found the ink was toolight to read. So I tried drawing with it to see if large patches of colour and going over the same lines multiple times would make it easier to see.
I took a break from testing new inks in December so I had a bit more time to draw. Usually I don’t think of shadows when I draw so I decided to make them a prominent feature. This exercise went quite well so I was inspired to draw more.
Color Traveler is an ink brand from Hiroshima, Japan. Their inks are usually given names related in some way to Hiroshima and Japan.
This ink was named after the Seto Inland Sea next to Hiroshima Prefecture. From the name, you might have thought that it is a landlocked sea but that’s not the case. It is a body of water separating three of the four main islands of Japan and serves as a waterway connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan.
As the name says, this is a dark blue-black ink. There is a tinge of purple that shows up in certain lighting and papers. Despite the dark colour, this ink is easy to clean out of the pen. It has a wet flow. On Midori MD paper, there is shading, no sheen, no feathering and no bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Birmingham Pen Company is a small family-run business that makes fountain pens and fountain pen inks. While the company started with fountain pens, they have moved on to making in-house inks.
Salt Water Taffy is part of the Swift Formula collection where the inks were designed to be wetter than average and performs well in a wide variety of fountain pen. This ink is a bright, neon pink that has a slight orange undertone. The pink is very saturated and readable even under dim light. However the colour is so bright that my eyes feel painful looking at the words for too long (but I admit that this is mostly psychological).
The ink has a very wet flow. I think the ink will be more suitable in the finer or drier nibs. Due to the wetness of the ink, it will perform well on some papers and worse on others. On Midori MD paper, there is shading, no sheen, no feathering and no bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Color Traveler is an ink brand from Hiroshima, Japan. Their inks are usually given names related in some way to Hiroshima and Japan.
This ink was named after the Yamato battleship built at Kure, Hiroshima from 1937 to 1940. It was not the first nor the last ship to be built at Kure. The ship itself was seen as the epitome of Imperial Japanese naval engineering but it was not the only one. There were other equally capable ships during that period. So I wondered why Color Traveler chose to name the ink after this particular battleship.
After some googling, I found that the name, Yamato (大和), carried great culture significance in Japan. According to Wikipedia, Yamato was originally the name for the area around today’s Sakurai City in Nara, which then by extension became the poetic name for Japan. It is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan. Thus, it is no wonder that some Japanese citizens during that time held the belief that their country could never fall as long as the ship was able to fight.
Kure Battleship Yamato Gray is a cool grey ink which darkens as it dries. It has an average flow. There is shading and no sheen. On Rhodia paper, there is no feathering and no bleedthrough.
Writing Sample
This is written with a TWSBI ECO-T medium nib.
Below are a couple of photos of how it looks when it is written on both sides of the paper.
Disclaimer: This ink was purchased by me and all opinions/photos are my own. This post was not sponsored.
Inkcredible Colours 