Today's Inkvent selection was a surprise and a revelation. The unassuming name is "Ash," and it is another "standard" ink--no shimmer or sheen. And yet, though not flashy, it is far from boring.
As you can see, it lives up to its name. It is grey, with a hint of a green undertone.
What surprised me was not its color, but its behavior.
The first thing I noticed was that it stayed on the dip pen much longer than is typical. I am pretty good at getting through a word without dipping again--most of the time. But the dip pen nib held the ink for longer, and I was able at least to write "Diamine Inkvent" without dipping again. (It is my understanding that calligraphy inks are different from fountain pen inks for this reason--they hold to the nib longer.)
When I switched to the Pilot Parallel and drew the wavy line, I noticed another property of this ink: it is very "wet." I have heard the term used without quite realizing how one ink could be "wetter" than another. This one is. If I'm correct, this should mean that it works particularly well in fine and extra fine pens.
Looking at some of the other methods of ink swatching that people do and post across the internet, I was interested to note that pens are not always the implement of choice. This really shouldn't have surprised me, but sometimes you don't notice that you're in a box until you break out of it a bit. The first thing I thought to try were some little pine trees, since I'm not quite sure what the shape of an ash tree might be. (Do you think that the reason the grey has a little undertone of green is because of trees?) Then I tried some rather incongruent mountains. And I thought of something else: I'm not certain what medium Tolkien used for his illustrations, and I have always assumed that it was watercolor. But perhaps it was ink? It now occurs to me to wonder for the first time: what kind of pen did he use?
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