Swatching Inks in My Journal (KWZ and Jacques Herbin Inks)

I thought I was dealing with allergies last week which turned out to be a head cold that Hubby shared with me. I’m slowly feeling somewhat normal and I’m hoping my creative juices will come back this week.

This morning I decided to continue with swatching some inks colors from KWZ Inks. Oh wait. I’m back to swatching fountain pen inks instead of playing with my watercolors? Yes. Shifting gears for a few hours today. Plus swatching colors seem to be the most creative thing I feel like doing at this moment.

In my previous ink swatching posts, I’ve been using my Col-o-ring swatch cards for the last two years as my primary method for swatching colors. I love having the ability to swap and re-organize my cards around in the ring. I’ve also been playing with my ink colors in my fountain pen ink journal to see how the inks react to water.

In my journal, I used to just dabble ink on a page and take a water brush and swipe the color. There was no rhyme or reason to my method and I would end up with a mishmash of colors on a page.

I thought I would bring some organization to my ink journal. Here’s what I came up with:

A sample page with my KWZ Inks and new swatching format

While I’m sharing my sample ink pages, I might as well share my thoughts on KWZ Inks. They have some beautiful ink colors. Amazing sheening and shading inks. As you can see from my samples, they are also wet inks.

I have to mention that KWZ Inks have a slight vanilla-ish odor. When I bought my first bottle last year, I was overwhelmed with the this scent in a pleasant way. After I filled my pen with ink, I looked forward to uncapping my pen and have this subtle scent surround me. Some folks might be ultra sensitive to this scent and I just want to share this bit of information.

With this new format, I can see the sheening and shading characteristics of each ink color.

I gathered up my bottles of Jacques Herbin shimmering inks and created another swatch page. Jacques Herbin has the best shimmering inks. There I said it! I have not had any clogging issues with their shimmering inks in my pens. Their inks flow beautifully.

A sample page of my Jacques Herbin shimmering ink

The Vert Atlantide is my favorite color. It has gold and silver particles and that green color is gorgeous.

I wanted to add that I let this page dry completely. Then I remembered I needed to add the water wash. That’s why there are hard edges/lines in the samples below.