Diamine Ink Sample Swatches

I have been collecting a few vials of ink samples. Sometimes I might get one or two with my orders. Sometimes an online vendor will send me one to try out. I typically wait until I collect more than half a dozen vials and block out some time in the morning to create my swatches.

This morning looked like a great time to get this done.

I posted in one of the fountain pen groups that I was looking for a good silver shimmering fountain pen ink to add to my palette. Some of you might remember a sketch I did of my first Benu pen, the beautiful Euphoria Bora Bora, and I was missing a silver shimmering ink to create the silver highlights in my pen. I ended up using my Daniel Smith silver iridescent watercolor to fill in.

I ended up ordering Diamine Moon Dust and Snow Storm. Since I was on a Diamine Shimmertastic frame of mind, I decided to add samples of Cocoa Shimmer and Blue Flame.

Wait a minute. I just listed four inks when I just mentioned I will swatch a minimum of six inks. There were two other Robert Oster inks I had, but since they were not Diamine inks and not shimmering inks I did not include them in this post.

There’s a reason why I wanted to devote this post to Diamine inks. I have enjoyed using and experimenting with their inks. Diamine was the second brand of shimmering inks I tried and fell in love with their Shimmertastic line of colors. My first shimmering brand I tried was Jacques Herbin and I will save that for future blog post.

I love how the Diamine ink colors are saturated. They are bold and vibrant colors. They also make great pen and ink washes. I find most of their ink colors (that I have) are somewhat wet. Personally, I think wet inks make great pen and ink washes on watercolor paper.

The Moon Dust looks like a neutral gray which is what I need for my palette of colors.

Cocoa Shimmer is a beautiful saturated brown ink with beautiful gold shimmers.

The Cocoa Shimmer is on my wish list. This is a gorgeous brown color that will work in my landscape palette.

In my ink swatch Stalogy journal I use the remaining ink on my Q-tip and dabble ink onto the paper. I take my water brush and go over the ink with water. This allows me to see the ink’s characteristics.