Dominant Industry – SusieG Studio

Day 22: My Eggplant Purple Swatches

Today’s Diamine Inkvent color is Deck the Halls. It’s a stunning chameleon ink with rose gold and copper shimmers. As more folks are posting this lovely ink color on social media, I’m seeing a purple color leaning towards red. The first thought that popped into my head was eggplant.

T’s swatch shows a pretty display of rose and gold shimmers.

Since this is called a chameleon ink, I expected to see two different shimmers in this ink. I can definitely see some rose and gold shimmers from T’s bottle.

I mentioned in my last blog post how I enjoy a good medium to dark pink color. I also enjoy a good purple leaning red color. You can see from my selection, this purple is also one of my fave colors.

I enjoy having a good range of colors. Each one has a unique personality or two.

I tried to narrow down my selection.

Sunset has a pretty rose gold shimmer.

If I had to choose three colors from inky collection, it would be these three.

Sydney Lavender and Summer Purple are my favorite purple ink colors.

Here’s a pen & ink wash circle I created back in November showing off Sydney Lavender’s underlying colors. Gorgeous, huh?

Yes, I will be adding Deck the Halls to my wish list as I do not have an eggplant ink color with the rose, gold and coppery shimmering particles.

Ink swatches: Diamine Red Inkvent Harmony. Diamine Frosted Orchid (shimmer). Robert Oster Sydney Lavender, Velvet Crush, and Silver Dawn (shimmer). Kaweco Summer Purple. Montblanc Amethyst. Van Dieman’s Ink Black Tongue Spider Orchid and Beetroot Relish. Dominant Industry Sunset (shimmer).

Day 12: My Purple Inky Swatches

Today’s Diamine Inkvent color is Memory Lane. This is a beautiful shimmering purple ink. Depending on the lighting is leans a bit towards a rosy color.

Here is T’s swatch for today.

T’s swatches were created with an automatic pen (top) and brush (bottom)

I can see some blue and pink in the underlying colors.

Here’s my swatch selection of colors. When I first saw Memory Lane, my thoughts went immediately to Silver Dawn which also has similar shimmering particles. This looks like a good match. I had to go through last years swatches to see if there were any similar colors. I’ve include Sunset in my initial selection for its similar underlying inky colors.

Here’s an angled picture to show off any shimmering highlights.

Here’s my three choices.

I believe Silver Dawn is a close match to Memory Lane including the silvery shimmers. I had to include Sydney Lavender which happens to be another favorite ink of mine. All three have the blue and pink underlying colors.

Silver Dawn is one of my favorite shimmering inks. It’s a well behaved ink that I’ve used in my fine nib fountain pens for both writing and sketching.

Ink swatches: Diamine Red Inkvent Storm and Night Shade. Robert Oster Silver Dawn (shimmer) and Sydney Lavender. Dominant Industry Sunset (shimmer).

Day 6: My Moody Gray Swatches

Today’s Diamine Inkvent calendar color is Ghost. It appears to be a gray standard ink with some interesting undertones.

Before I get started, I wanted to give T a shout out: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Here is T’s swatch for today and her inky notes: “Day 6 – I used an automatic pen for the first time for these swatches. It took a while to learn to avoid scratching the paper. This very wet standard ink was great for practicing. All of the swatches came out very differently. The image with 5 blooms is the only one done with a paintbrush”.

After I looked at T’s swatch and several others, I managed to find a few of my swatches that have similar personalities to Ghost.

I had to include two neutral gray swatches (Moon Dust and Shoebill Stork Grey) to show how much more vibrant Ghost and my comparison swatches are.

I know Antique Sepia leans quite a bit towards green, but I wanted to show the similar underlying colors. This is a beautiful color to use in sketches.

Here are the three colors that look very similar to Ghost.

Ghost is very similar to last year’s inky color called Ash. I can see some pinkish and bluish undertones.

In some of the online swatches I’ve seen, Ghost appears to lean a bit more towards a purple color. I believe the blue underlying color adds to this purplish personality.

My Autumn Forest ink contains some lovely rose gold shimmers and I think I will stick to this ink color. No need for me to add Ghost to my wish list.

Ink swatches: Diamine Red Inkvent Ash. Dominant Industry Autumn Forest. Robert Oster Australian Opal Gray. Birmingham Pen Co Antique Sepia. Anderillium Shoebill Stork Grey. Diamine Shimmering Moon Dust.

Pausing for Station Identification: Most of My Swatch Cards

Today is day 3 of the Diamine inky calendar. I’m pausing my blog as I need to spend some time tackling today’s unique chameleon inky color and find some decent matches from my collection.

Speaking of my swatch collection, I wanted to share with my readers what I look at when I typically see a color I’m interested in. Do I have this particular color in my collection? For example, for the first few weeks of December what swatches come close to the daily colors I see. What is the base color? What are the underlying colors? Is there any sheen and how much? If it’s a shimmering, what color(s) do I see?

I process a lot of color information in my head and as a watercolor artist who enjoys mixing paint colors, I tend to see a range of colors that an average person may not see or recognize at first. Okay, let’s get back to my blog post on swatch cards.

I create and keep swatches of the many bottles of inks I have in my collection. The pictures in this blog post does not include the sample ink vials I also have. Awhile back, I’ve stopped swatching the many vials of ink as they were a waste of time for me and resources. If the color did not appeal to me, why create a swatch card?

Let me introduce to you to my largest swatch collection on a rather large binder ring. Here is my Robert Oster Signature swatch ring.

Yes, I am a big fan of Robert Oster inky colors. I’ve lost count on the number of bottles I have. I’ve probably used half of his colors in one of my many pen & ink wash sketches. My RO shimmering colors are at the front of my ring (upper right) and stop at the white Col-o-ring card. This rather large collection is organized by colors. I enjoy using these inks for writing in my journals and for my pen & ink washes on a variety of art paper.

My next largest binder ring is a collection that contains several of my favorite inky manufacturers. This ring is organized by ink manufacturers and colors. This ring includes Birmingham, Colorverse, Diamine, Jacques Herbin, Platinum, Private Reserve, Rohrer & Klingner, Sailor, Taccia, Van Dieman’s Ink, and Vinta Inks. These are the inks I would use for both writing and sketching in my journals and art papers.

My next largest ring contains a smattering of bottles of inks I have, but may not use the ink on a regular basis. Many bottles/colors end up on this ring which I would use for writing in my journals and not necessary use in my inky sketches. This ring is organized by ink manufacturer and color.

Here’s is my swatch family together.

I do have smaller rings of swatch cards. For example I keep all my Red Inkvent swatch cards on a smaller 1″ binder ring. I keep a small ring for my shimmering inks organized by color. That ring includes shimmering inks from various ink manufacturers. My Anderillium test swatches are still in its own ring.

When I have a few minutes later today I’ll try to remember to capture pictures of the other smaller rings I have and update this blog post.

In the meantime, I need to pull out my swatch cards for today’s chameleon inky color.

Dominant Industry Inks

I came across Dominant Industry Inks a few weeks ago when I kept seeing two lovely ink colors appear on my social media feed.

Dominant Industry inks is based in South Korea. They designed the inks for their unique colors and effects. Their 25ml bottles are packaged in a cardboard box and includes a cloth dust bag and a single use pipette.

The heavy and unique shaped bottles look lovely sitting on my desk.

Strangely, I could not find a company website to get more details about their inks or any information about the company.

After looking at all the available ink colors, I narrowed down my choices to two Pearl ink colors called Sunset and Autumn Forest.

The Sunset ink is an unusual dusty purple ink that leans a bit towards rose. There are pink and blue undertone colors along with a rose gold shimmer. I feel as though the shimmers makes the purple ink lean a bit more towards pink.

I went through my ink swatches and the colors that came close to Sunset was Robert Oster Velvet Crush and Taccia Murasaki.

The Autumn Forest ink color is a unique ink color. I say that as it depends on what paper you use this ink on. On my swatch card, the ink appears to be a medium gray ink color. This ink has a pink and a bit of blue undertone colors as well as rose gold shimmer. Depending on the lighting, the ink color could also be considered gray-brown.

It’s interesting to look at other people’s swatches and see some green in their ink. I do not see any green at all.

I also went through my ink swatches to see what other colors I have that come close to Autumn Forest. I came up with a winner. Diamine Ash from the Red Inkvent Calendar. It’s very close match minus the shimmering particles.

The colors are gorgeous in my inky washes. For journal writing, ~~I will use the inks in my broader nib pens.~~ I prefer Autumn Forest over Sunset for readability. Sunset is a bit too light for me to write with.