Diamine Inkvent Calendar Days 17 and 18

 Oops! I missed posting yesterday, so today's is a catch-up post.

First, day 17, which continued the previous three days' pattern:

"Thunderbolt" is a standard ink, but does have a tiny bit of a red sheen to it.

It is a beautiful bright royal blue that I wouldn't mind having. I've been all about bright colors lately!

There's not much to draw for this name--thunder not being visible...  And I thought of Harry Potter's broomstick from Prisoner of Azkaban, but of course, that's a Firebolt, not a thunderbolt. Oh well!

Day 18 broke the pattern by not providing a red ink. I didn't mind...

The name, which took me a while to decipher, is "Subzero" ("Superhero"? "Slytherin"? "Slippery"?)

It is a shimmer ink, which wasn't immediately apparent, but when it appears, it is stunning. A light blue shimmer in an ice blue ink.

This color and color name was much more evocative.

And here is the second set of six:

Only six more before the Christmas Day reveal!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 16

Day 16 is very familiar... Named "Vintage Copper," today's ink bears a very striking resemblance to Day 14: "Red Robin," except that this ink does, in fact, have shimmer. 

This is our first shimmer ink in a while--since Day 12, though we had two in a row with "Party Time" and "Stargazer."

I admit that I wasn't initially very excited about this ink, but it made me think of copper roofs, bright pennies, and a particular copper bracelet (that was probably more brown than copper, truthfully. It also made me think, inexplicably, of bronze medals...  Hmmm....

I am trying to decide whether I think this is a gold shimmer, or whether the shimmer is actually copper. I love the idea of it being a copper shimmer too much, so copper shimmer it is.

I wonder if Day 17 will be blue?

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 15

Day 15 is another blue ink - this one called "Night Shade" and it is a standard ink.

This is a very nice blue that dries to a rather different color than it starts out. It is a bit of a muted color, where the other blues (day 9, day 12, and day 13) were more vivid--and both had special properties.  

This one reminds me of a Colorverse shade--"Cotton Blue" because of how it behaves, though the color is quite different.

I like this ink because it does seem to shade (if I'm using the term correctly) from a medium to a darker blue, and how that allows me to add some detail when I use the paintbrush.

I can't quite believe it's only 10 days until Christmas... I'm not sure if the calendar is a distraction or a reminder! I almost for got to comment on what the heck does Night Shade have to do with the holiday season??? But you can see that I chose, instead, to think of windows and curtains and window shades... at night. 

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 14

Two weeks into the Inkvent calendar (and the month of December) is Day 14, "Red Robin," a standard ink, with no shimmer or sheen. 

I found that I was able to write rather well with the dip pen--the ink seemed to cling to the nib rather well. I'm not entirely sure what the name for that quality of ink might be. The ink is a rust-red...

Rather reminiscent of the breast of an American Robin (at least the male, whose breast is a deeper color). This is perhaps not the intention, as the English robin is a different bird, and Diamine is an English ink. (The American Robin is not actually a true robin at all; it is related to the thrush, while a European robin is related to the flycatcher. In other news, I couldn't get past the first chapter of a book that melded Pride and Prejudice with dragons because it assumed that there were hummingbirds in England. There aren't.)

 

I was, perhaps unfortunately, reminded of a burger restaurant chain featuring bottomless french fries. Yum!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day13

Day 13 has me singing an unlikely song. I don't really know what Diamine is thinking with these names. This one is "Ruby Blues," and I knew immediately what the color would be, even before I saw the word "Sheen."

It is, of course, a blue that sheens red, which you can see better here:

And what a sheen it is! I haven't tested it to see if it smears... I find that some of the most dramatically sheening inks do. 

But what's unfortunate has nothing to do with what the ink looks like--it's that I thought of "Blues," hence the guitar, and I thought of the Kenny Rogers song (which was covered by Cake), "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" (I then went on a strange internet odyssey, during which I discovered that Waylon Jennings sang that song first, listened to Waylon sing The Dukes of Hazzard theme song and sing with Big Bird, and wound up listening to Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler" and "If You're Gonna Play in Texas" by Alabama, just to assure myself that I did, in fact, know that song. I won't even tell you what my brain did with the speaker of "Ruby" and the subject of "Hey Joe"... (talk about crossover)

Look! I painted a guitar! (not my best, but here it is--and now I'm thinking of Picasso and The Counting Crows)

Cheers!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 12

Day 12, "Stargazer," is bound to be a crowd favorite. Before I opened this one, a friend and fellow fountain-pen enthusiast--who has vastly greater knowledge, and who first introduced us to Diamine inks and the Inkvent calendar in 2019--texted: "Today's ink - wow!" And... that does sum it up pretty well.

Today's has both simmer and sheen--and obviously so! No subtlety here! The base ink is a dark blue--basically a navy--that sheens reddish with a green shimmer.

Now, here it is worth making a comparison. I have a bottle of the Diamine Special "Blue Edition" Ink Happy Holidays, which debuted in the 2019 Inkvent calendar. You will see that the two are remarkably similar:

This year's, on the left, does not, in the above picture, show the base ink very well--I was a little heavy-handed, so the shimmer and sheen took over. But you can still see that 2019's Happy Holidays is a brighter blue--more of a royal blue--and while the sheen is the same, the shimmer is, to my eye, blue rather than green. 

Similar, but I'm not entirely sure that the sheen shows quite this dramatically:

This brings us to half of the Advent 24, and the completion of my second page of samples:

I can't wait to see what the next 12 will bring!

Diamine Inkvent Calendar Day 11

 

Day 11 gives us an ink that rewards patience. It is called "Party Time," fitting in with the theme of festivity that gets oddly broken up by tempest and storm, or moderated by candle light and raspberry rose. It is a shimmer ink, though this may not be immediately apparent. 

In fact, the shimmer is only apparent once the bright fuschia ink has completely dried. When it did, it had a lovely, unusual shimmer that seems to be almost a pale lavender.

Tomorrow, I finish page 2 of my Invent ink swatches, which is shaping up to be quite a lovely page!