Part 1 is here and has some background details. One that I didn’t mention before: I take these photos with an iPhone XR. 1
I think Diamine is often strongest with its warm shades. One of my earliest full-bottle purchases was Terracotta, one of my first glitter inks was Golden Sands, and I’m fully on board with the love for Ancient Copper and Oxblood2. Anyway, here’s Day 16, Vintage Copper, up close.
I do see the differences between Days 9 and 12, Storm and Stargazer, but….ehh. The cool dark Diamine shades I like the most are usually the “chameleon” ones, where there’s more than one tone.
I was thinking that I might have to swatch Day 11, Party Time, again because it looked like I hadn’t rinsed off my dip pen completely. But I do swatches in order and Day 10, Peach Punch3, couldn’t have done that. So the blue-purple here is real. Cool.
The “standard” star in this group is Day 14, Red Robin. I love how the red-brown is loyal to its name — another proof in my Diamine warm shades thesis.
Sheen inks like Day 13, Ruby Blues, don’t do their thing on this roughly-equivalent-to-an-everyday-spiral-notebook paper, so I didn’t bother going in for a closeup. I like sheen inks, but not enough to pull them all and do right by them with formal swatches on Rhodia or Tomoe River. Time and life choices, etc.
Part 3, coming soon!
E
P.S. I’m sorry to be missing AWP. Please consider yourself hugged!
In the Before Times, I went through a period where I was like “credit card be damned, just get the best Apple product so it will last longer!” During that era I bought an iPhone XR, an iPad Pro, and the very last MacBook Air with an Intel motherboard — all maxed on RAM and on storage. About six years later, no regrets. The only one that is starting to show signs of age is the iPhone XR — it sometimes freezes for a minute now. While I’m drawn to the ideas of mag-safe chargers, a better camera, and especially Find My Device down to the inch with AirTags, I’m mostly just thinking that I should delete a bunch of apps and try a factory reset. I’ll probably wait to buy again until the devices aren’t supported anymore (i.e., the OSes can’t be updated). When that happens, I’ll also probably drop down a notch on storage. It makes sense to go full hog when you’re a marching band parent, but these days my photos are mostly of cats and stuff I see in the grocery store.
And, of course, Writer’s Blood.
No closeup because honestly, the first picture covers it. I think there are companies that do better jobs with similar shades — one I’m not comfortable with recommending. If you like reading about that kind of thing, here’s a place to start.
(And I realized, just now, that the merchant links in this entry — I mostly just try not to link to the same places often — are to Goulet Pens, which also features prominently in the link above. I’m just going to leave all as is because otherwise I’ll never get around to publishing this entry, but want to make clear that the combo was truly unintentional.)