Got my inner scientist on tonight. Looking at all the vials of ink laid out with the droppers it reminded me of my uni science labs. My order from Larry post arrived today with my samples of different de Atramentis archival document ink colours!
Mixology
When it comes to ink there are so many different types of ink it’s pretty overwhelming. I ended up going down the rabbit hole of reading lots of blogs of those who have tested this over many years and also tried a range of different inks. It was really helpful to understand if this would work for me, see the colours and also refine the list of ink colour I actually needed on my wishlist.
I really like Liz steel who has organised a collection of posts of permanent inks and how to use them also a special post on fog grey which I found beautiful yet hard to buy. She also linked to Jane Blundell’s blog who is known for her extensive library of different watercolour paint swatches and I’ve referred to her blog countless times when trying to work out which version of red to choose. Jane Blundell actually uses de Atramentis ink to mix different colours and also shows the ratios on her site with pictures of the swatches. I realised after reading this it was the same as watercolor paint, I don’t need a lot of colours just the primaries. So after reading Jane’s blog it was easy to pick the minimum colours I needed to and mix my own.
Here’s the results.
I used old droppers and oil stand from my previous venture with doTerra essential oils and mixing using the droppers to mix inks was not much different to mixing and blending essential oils.
I had the lids lined up with the droppers to be careful not to cross contaminate colours. Using droppers meant I could count out the drops. This is not something you can do accurately by pouring and looking at the colour. The ink colour is considerably darker than on paper and even then it softens or dulls when dry.T
E swatches were drawn with deatramentis black ink and to check for opacity I also scribbled a black line in the middle.
The sample colours of the de Atramentis archival document range (which are permanent, waterproof) I ordered were:
White
Magenta
Red
Yellow
Cyan – light blue
Blue
Dark blue
Brown
I also ordered a bottle of black ink and Tomoe river paper dot print and have used it to swatch out the inks and my custom mixes. The colour is definitely more brilliant on the tome river loose sheets paper than the lightweight paper in my travellers passport notebook which is also meant to be tomoe river paper. I recall hearing the old version of this paper is better than the new version. This paper is regarded as the best for showing off shimmer and sheening inks which I’m interested in using if I can find one that doesn’t clog my pens and can be inked up.
Jane Blundell’s swatches were amazing and had the ratios written underneath it. This meant I could quickly and easily follow her recipe to mix my own version of the colour. I was happy to be able to mix my own version of fog grey as this was only really available as a 2ml samples from Goulet pens and unavailable anywhere else. I was also looking for a particular shade of green after we were given a bright red and green tin with retro Singaporean images on the tin. So I was happy I was able to mix the right shade of green and it is waterproof ! It also means that if it’s not quite right I can also add more yellow or even red or blue to green.
My daughter also made her own version of a lilac purple.
I had about 4 larger bottles and a bunch of small sample vial from an old Temu order so was finally able to use them all up!
Overall I’m pretty happy I can now mix any colour I want and it’s pretty simple to adjust the recipe.
Pastels
I loved mixing white with the different colours. It’s actually a ratio of 5:1 for the pastels. Potentially you could even use more white.
With the white ink it seems to act like a gouache and is quite opaque. Also in some parts it seemed to mix in with the black ink on the paper. I will have to do a few more tests to see if this is because it is going over the black ink or if it is because of the paper the black ink wasn’t dried completely.
The pastel colours reminds me of the Pental gel pens we used to buy as kids they had multi coloured pens so the colour could change unpredictability as you are writing.
Update: the next day we found that the white in the pastel mixes settled in the bottom of the bottle so even my daughter said I think the white must be heavier than the other ink. Also means that you might need to shake or roll your pen before each use similar to using shimmer inks.
Full bottle wishlist
Given the amount of ink I used across all the mixes the full bottles of ink I would consider next would be
Yellow, Blue, Brown.
This will give you a range of greys and browns perfect for Urban sketching.
After that
White – for highlights and pastels then
Magenta and
Cyan
just to complete the traditional CYMB collection which means you can mix any colour you want.
Having cyan, a lighter blue, will mean I can mix more vibrant greens but might be an interesting experiment for another day.
It would be interesting at some point to mix the whole colour matrix properly similar to what I’ve done with may watercolor paints. Unless I just use a brush…
Price comparisons:
My first bottle of de Atramentis black document ink was from Adamstown art but unfortunately their prices have gone up from $29.95 to now $37.95 plus shipping approx $10! I don’t think it was on sale but last time the overall price with shipping was cheaper than other sites.
The cheapest de Atramentis bottles of ink was from Cult pens in Wales at $26.42 for a 45ml bottle. They did not have all the colours I wanted in stock but the colours they were missing they had them in the Rohrer & Klingner sketchINK in 50ml bottles at only $17.46! I was tempted to buy from them as they offer free shipping to Australia when you spend over $200. and prices were in AUD so no rude shock after paying. Prices were in AUD so there is no rude shock after paying. This works out to be much more cost effective but they didn’t offer samples so I would be paying $200-300 AUD for the range of colours I wanted to try and they were not on sale. Maybe once I’ve tried out some colours I can look into buying the full bottles and look out for more sales at the end of the year as their end of financial year runs by calendar year not mid year like we have in Australia. Reviews from a few bloggers who have tried both brands in their fountain pen, they seemed to have a preference for de Atramentis.
The last time I bought a range of samples was from Pulp Addiction in WA but unfortunately they don’t stock De Atramentis or SketchInk and their range of waterproof inks was limited.
I looked into samples from the Goulet pen company and they have one of the largest most extensive range of samples including the deatramentis ink. Unfortunately they did not have samples of the de Atramentis artist sketch ink range which including being waterproof and mixable they are lightfast. So I was hoping to buy a range of their 2ml samples but when I went to order not only did I have to pay international shipping prices it was an additional $16 USD to ship to Australia just for an order of samples! Maybe one day when the USD to AUD is back to par (those were the days).
Finally the last site I found was Larry Post and they sell 5ml sample inks of all the de Atramentis archival inks that I was after! I’ve typically found Larry Post more expensive than Pulp Addiction but they have a great range of quality art materials of the brand so have used such as Twsbi, deatramentis, Sailor, Rosemary and Co pocket brushes, Hanhumule watercolour sketchbooks… anyway check out my pinned post for my favourite supplies and also links to where I’ve found them the cheapest to buy (noting this was at the time of purchase.. so shop around). They’re probably the only place in Australia I’ve seen that sells Rosemary and Co pocket brushes however they are more expensive than purchasing from Rosemary and Co even with shipping especially if there’s say a black friday sale on.
I was also happy to find they sell Tome River paper and not just their planning journals which you typically find but the actual loose sheets of paper and it’s the 52 g/m2 which is no longer manufactured. The company was sold to another which produces 68 g/m2 however a quick search tells me perhaps they also produce a new version of the 52 g/m2. Regardless I did pay more but I was happy to combine in my existing order and was able to get free shipping. Even compared to my watercolour paper it comes in a 50 sheets pack so makes it super cost effective. Plus with my new book binders kit I can make my own custom book again now with Tome River paper. It works out to be about 4.66c per A6 side page! I can then interlace it with sketching paper and watercolour paper.
In the end even though buying samples are higher cost per ml, because Larry post offered free shipping over a certain amount spent, it made more sense to this over Goulet pens or even cult pens. Plus having a larger 5ml sample is a decent amount and I can test out more colour combinations and also ink up my own a few times. Also, as mentioned already, testing out the inks using samples, it will be easy to tell which colours I should invest with a full size court. As a company I was quite impressed with their customer service, and free express postage.
Rachel Fong Art 