Blue? Blue-Black? Or Somewhat In-Between? In Which Dr. inkensteinWonders

My dear friend Susan, learning of Dr. Inkenstein's Grayish-Blue-Black quest, asked a great question: 'Can't you mix inks to get the exact color you want?'

 

And of course you can.  I've done it.  Lots of others have, too.  But you might run into problems when two inks from different sides of the tracks clash and start a feud.  The results: SITB, or as it's technically known, Slime/Stuff/Shinola In The Bottle.

 

Recently Dr. inkenstein had to dump an eyedropper glass bottle of Fireball, a custom red-orange mix, because of SITB.  Also a bottle of Everflo True Blue, which was not a mix at all.  And it's harder to clean a contaminiated (and potentially beloved) pen than dump a bottle, so no matter how it hurt, out the bottles went.

 

Then, when mixing inks, there is also the factor of losing one or more components of the inks, such as Wetness, Flow, Lubrication, Bulletproofness.

 

Ink.  It's kinda like science!   You need a lab coat, test tubes, a Jacob's Ladder, and maybe even lightning!

 

So on to testing more loads of blues and blue-blacks:

And yes.  You can tell that Diamine China Blue is in no way even remotely blue-black.  But I included that color to make a point.  Probably. 

And yet...what of the Misty Blue?  Has it BB elements, hints?  And the Akkerman?  Is it BB?  Indigo?  

Where do you draw the line?  And with what color?

Shootout! In Which Dr. Inkenstein Draws Down Orange

A quick-draw shootout between two sorta/kinda orange inks: Lamy Copper Orange and Noodler's Apache Sunset: the former produced as a liquid companion to Lamy's Copper Orange Al-Star fountain pen, the latter famed for its shading.

Here in scannage, there's less visible difference between the two, but In Real Life, the Lamy ink is less of a simple orange and more of an orange that can't decide if it wants to grow up to be pink, coral or red.   Maybe I like it.  Will have to see if it works well in pens with fine nibs.

The real difference is here, in the chromas.  Which read right-to-left opposite of the way they appear in the written shootout. Operator error.  But behold:

 

 

See?  Different-y.  A LOT.

 

Until next time.

MI-10: In Which Dr. Inkenstein Gets Beachy

Just havin' some fun, as the Summer Mystery arrived:

One final addition to the MI-10 Experience: I had neglected to run a chroma, so I did a quickie here.



These two were inks I might never have tried, though 'Carli' is a color right up my alley, and if I were buying an Edelstein it would be this 'n. I didn't notice the dryness many people mentioned in their reciews, but the Rotring Artpen might be a garden hose.

Loved working with 'Lloyd.' It glides in the pens I used, I see lavender and turquoise notes in the chroma. Oddly enough, 'Lloyd' seemed to have an affinity for my fingers like no other ink...ie: every time I opened the vial, some of it leapt onto them. 

So thanks once again to the Undisputed Queen of Ink-stery, for the opportunity to try a range of inks I might not have otherwise sampled.  

Stay tuned for more.