Diamine Blaze Orange (ink test)

I hesitate to call this an ink "review" per se.  I'm not a fountain pen connoisseur, and I don't test inks by writing "the quick brown fox jumped over a lazy dog" then drawing some squiggles and dripping water on the paper.  I care more about the ink's functionality as a paint or sketch medium than how wet or dry or whatever it is in some $200 pen that I don't intend to purchase.

© Chromeheart

Generally speaking, the more saturated the color of an ink, the worse the shading is, so I honestly wasn't expecting much in terms of writing quality.  I guess it goes to show, one shouldn't judge an ink by the way it looks in a vial.This photo is color accurate, and as you can see, it shades quite beautifully from pale orange to carmine.

Writing test done in a basic Fabriano sketchbook with cream paper, since that's what I normally write in.  Fabriano paper is actually manufactured in Italy, unlike many of their competitors, and it doesn't bleed through or feather.  Don't even get me started on the "Italian"-but-actually-Chinese bad excuse for stationery otherwise known as Moleskine.

The fact that this ink is a midtone at its darkest shade makes it very limiting in terms of painting, unless I decide I want to do a series of low contrast orange cityscapes or something.  (actually, that's not a bad idea).  Anyway, the point, I'm not really feeling monochrome orange in my sketchbook.  Although it looks pretty out of a medium nib, I don't think the color lends itself very well to ink wash painting.  Furthermore, the water solubility of this ink is so dramatic that it pools and makes a mess if I try to work another layer over an area that's already dried.  On the upside, that quality would force me to stop being so darned finicky and commit to whatever I put down on the first pass.  It could go either way, really.

Paintsketch done in Handbook journal.  Cream paper with a slight bit of tooth, which snags on dry writing nibs just enough to annoy me.  American made handblown-glass pen, I don't remember the artist off the top of my head.