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Messages - K-2

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1
Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Calligraphy Crush Ink Issue
« on: January 05, 2024, 12:49:07 PM »
Thanks for the shout out!

There's some pretty great content by @Erica McPhee in that issue too!
(I think I'm going to make another folded pen this weekend!)

--yours truly, K


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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2023
« on: January 03, 2024, 05:41:39 PM »
@AnasaziWrites - in years past, Diamine has released ALL the Invent inks in 50ml bottles, usually in April, so I don't think you need fret about whether or not you'll get a big bottle of your favorite. They are limited editions though, so once they sell out of the 50ml bottles, they don't make more of them. In other words, don't wait too long to get the ones you want.

As for storage.... A friend of mine is making me a storage container/shelf-box, but in the meantime, I have them in the shallow cardboard shipping box that they came in. Note - I am out of room, so I haven't put the 2022 inks in there with the others yet!

On the Col-O-Ring, I just have them in order of opening (grouped by year), but I've been thinking about re-sorting them according to the base ink color, to match the "rainbow" layout in the box (which also do not consider the shimmer/sheen/chameleon qualities in their organization).


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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2023
« on: January 02, 2024, 07:46:21 PM »
Happy New Year, Inkventors!  It's been sort of crazy at work lately, and I did a piece about ink for Calligraphy Crush too, so I'm late to the party.
Okay, @AnasaziWrites I'm going to dribble these out, not in order, but just as the mood strikes me and time allows. My general theme is "nostalgia" - and all the pictures are going to be of some rather personal element of my history.

Starting with Jacaranda! (technically #8). Such a pretty, vibrant color, exactly the shade of jacaranda blossoms, with delicate pink & blue chromo and a clean white reaction to bleach. The color made me nostalgic for Southern California, where jacaranda trees lined the streets of my hometown.

(ps - Mike, did you notice that there were no "sheening" inks in this collection? I'm a little dismayed - I love an ink with sheen! But Diamine's fabulous commitment to shimmer may make up for my slight disgruntlement).


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Coffee & Nib-bles / Re: K2,..... Are you happy now?
« on: December 17, 2023, 02:18:19 PM »
May Vince Scully smile upon us.

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Inktober 2023 / Inktober 2023 - After Party
« on: November 01, 2023, 07:02:34 PM »
Congratulations & thank you to all the folks who contributed to Flourish Forum's Inktober!
@Erica McPhee - How can we ever thank you for forming such a supportive community? Congratulations again on TEN YEARS of Flourishing!

@AnasaziWrites @Lucie Y @tiffany.c.a @Matthew H. @Cyril Jayant @Mark T @Mary_M - Thank you for posting your beautiful work and offering so much encouragement to the process.

@Gary - I see you lurking there! I think we all appreciate your "likes"!

Just like last year and the year before, it feels like we got to know each other a bit over the course of the month. I hope we'll see more of everyone's work, hopes and aspirations elsewhere on the Forum, and that we'll come back for Inktober next year too.

I took a quick photo of my alphabet (with some doubles of the letters that I liked both versions of). Not bad for a month's work, if I do say so myself.

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 31 - 2023 -Fire
« on: October 31, 2023, 05:35:48 PM »
@Cyril Jayant - What a cozy way for Snoopy & Woodstock to end Inktober! Such a lively drawing.

@AnasaziWrites - I had guessed it was McCaffery's Red-Violet that you used on "Rush"! I love that ink!

@Erica McPhee & Mike - there is indeed a certain irony to that mailbox for Rush/Urgent (especially living in a place where there is effectively no true "overnight" mail service). I have a huge respect and affection for the US Postal Service though.

Here it is - the final Inktober 2023 prompt! It's been an amazing month with you all! Thank you for participating and/or for offering encouragement and support! What an amazing community - thanks again to Erica for bringing us all together!

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 30 - 2023: Rush
« on: October 30, 2023, 11:41:09 PM »
@AnasaziWrites - oh, Mike, that is some ravishing Spencerian! (what ink, please?)

@Cyril Jayant - Such terrific movement and fluidity in that piece!

And @Lucie Y - The ink on the "Massive/eXtra-large" elephants is Diamine's "Earl Grey", another of my go-to grey inks for the superb chroma-effects. I think of it as the warm non-shimmer counterpart to the Atlas Iron Ore ink.

I already had Atlas Iron Ore out, so I used it to draw the capital for today's "Rush" - but now that I have a satisfactory R for my alphabet (thanks, "Remove") I can substitute "Urgent" for "Rush" so that I get a U.

And that was the last letter I needed for a complete A-Z. I'll post about that at the after-party. ONE MORE DAY!

8
Show & Tell / Re: The Vatican Observatory
« on: October 30, 2023, 11:25:18 PM »
@Lucie Y - Ask and thou shalt receive!

Here are a couple of looks at Ferris Wheel Press "Atlas Iron Ore" in a Pilot Parallel Pen (2.4mm). Note the shape of the bottle: So pretty and so dumb! I live in fear that I will knock it over, because it has such a tiny base.

As you can see, because it's a shimmer ink, it has different looks at different angles. The Parallel pen does a good job at distributing the shimmer as you write. When you use a dip pen, you'll get a lot of shimmer after a shake & a dip, and then it trails off as you write.

It's a fairly dark grey underneath the shimmer - but the magic is in the chromatography (as you can see from the portrait of Brother Guy). I absolutely love doing wash drawings with this ink. If I don't want the shimmer in a drawing, I just let it settle to the bottom of the bottle.

It appears to be sold out on the Ferris Wheel Press (US) website at the moment, but maybe it's available at their Canada or Euro site - I got an extra bottle last time I was in Chicago at the Atlas Stationers shop, and I see that they still have it in stock.

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 29 - 2023: Massive
« on: October 29, 2023, 10:28:33 PM »
@AnasaziWrites - Some people say I live a life of globe-trotting adventure, full of exciting discoveries in manuscript libraries, but YOU, sir, are the true glob-trotting adventurer! (actually, nobody who is familiar with my research says anything of the sort of me; even other medievalists are amazed at the tedium involved)
* But Mike - does it say more about you that you recognized the blurry tiny label on my "Sparkle/Effervesce" bottle, or about me insofar as I didn't bother looking at a reference photo to draw it, but that it was still recognizable to you.  ;)

I think I might take your suggestion and pop open a bottle of La Veuve when the month is over - It's been an absolutely vile stretch at work, but Inktober has kept me sane and grounded in the sort of work I like to do best (even as my administrative overlords have kept me too busy to do my actual job). It's given me a sample alphabet for a potential collaborative project too!

@Cyril Jayant - I agree with Mike about your "Sparkle" drawing - your best yet!

@Lucie Y - I'm looking forward to hearing about and seeing work with your new inks when they arrive! Please start a new thread about them! And I have to know if the bottle design does not simultaneously and equally delight you with its beauty and dismay you with its utter impracticality.
* I did a review of the Atlas Iron Ore on this thread: https://theflourishforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=7712.0
* I keep a 2.4mm Parallel pen loaded with it at all times!  However, you may be disappointed in that it is ONLY available at the Atlas Stationers in Chicago, IL. That's the place I get my Inkvent sets from too, Mike - I have a lot of rewards points from their customer loyalty program, so I got a pretty big discount on it  ;D  Have I opened it!? Before the start of Advent?! What are you accusing me of, Sir? Self-restraint? You know I have none! I mean, how else am I going to get all the swatch cards ready so that I can figure out what to draw with them in December?

* Hey, maybe I should buy some ink instead of that Veuve Clicquot as a reward for finishing the month! It's way less expensive and it lasts longer too! Justification unlocked!

Here is my take on "Massive" - I need an X for my alphabet though, so I down-sized it to eXtra large.

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 28 - 2023: Sparkle
« on: October 29, 2023, 03:06:30 AM »
@AnasaziWrites - a scintillating photo! I just reorganized all my tiny Inkvent bottles to make room for the Inkvent set that just arrived in the mail!
* And thank you for your good thoughts about my "Beast" (and also @Erica McPhee - and for your patience for the pedantry as well).

@Lucie Y - I hope you know that your work is already very high quality! Your Fraktur is progressing every day! Your Italics are really clean! Your Ronde is superb!
* With regard to the ink - I want to assure you that the Ferris Wheel Press inks are really nice (I love the Atlas Iron Ore. love. it), and I'm sure you'll get great use out of the ones you selected, provided you don't knock the silly top-heavy bottles over and spill all that precious ink! I really cannot stress enough that you cannot dip a pen into those bottles. But the inks are safe for fountain pens in general (although I probably wouldn't put shimmer ink into pens with hooded nibs that are hard to completely disassemble).
* The Pilot Parallel pens take shimmer inks particularly well, and are actually super easy to clean. You can pull the entire nib/feed unit out of the grip section and wash it. When I use fountain pen inks in them, I squirt them into used/empty cartridges with a blunt syringe (some people just fill the body of the pen and seal the threads with silicon grease, but I prefer to keep things a little more contained). The Parallel nib units also fit into the grip section of the Opus 88 - a dropper fill with a huge reservoir and a shut off valve that's great for traveling. It's a bit of an investment though.
* And yes, I have a serious weakness for sparkly ink - I even bought the Wearingeul shimmer potions to add sparkle to my non-shimmer inks. So Lucie, you never have to justify your ink purchases to me. Just be aware that I am an enabler.

@Vintage_BE - Lovely Copperplate! Wow! (and great minds think alike - we had a similar idea for Sparkle  :D).

I used "Effervesce" for "Sparkle" so that I get an E for my alphabet.

This is a good reminder about how some fountain pen ink is not suited for dip pens - I really had to fight the Diamine "Celebration" (Inkvent 2022) ink that I chose for this piece, knowing it wasn't well suited to the task. It wanted to blob all over, but when I mixed it with enough gum arabic, it suppressed the shimmer. This is an ink that works great in a parallel pen though (which I didn't use, because I was too lazy to fill one with it). And it's got nice shading (as you can see from the background wash), and good reaction to bleach. The capital E is the same Coliro "Phoenix" that I used for "Golden" (way back on Day 6).

Only three more days to go! (and then I'll start prepping for Inkvent, I guess).

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Congratulations, @Erica McPhee - And Happy Anniversary, Flourish Forum!

This community helped me come out of my shell a bit, and it really got me through the pandemic lockdown. I'll always be grateful.

--yours, K

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 27 - 2023: Beast
« on: October 27, 2023, 09:07:16 PM »
@AnasaziWrites - Louie may be a beast, but you can tell that he's a very good boy!
@Cyril Jayant - Snoopy too!

Thank you, @Erica McPhee and @Lucie Y and everyone else for your kind thoughts about me finally getting a presentable R for Remove.

Lucie - your dedication to your art and building your skills is an inspiration to us all! You totally deserve to treat yourself to some beautiful inks!
* The packaging on Ferris Wheel Press products is really spectacular (but you also pay a premium for it). I have several of their inks, but also a couple complaints about the packaging that kind of keeps me from buying more of them - 1. beautiful though it may be, the shape of the bottles makes them very tippy, and I'm always terrified that I'm going to knock them over (38ml is disc-shaped with a narrow base; 20ml or 80ml is spherical with a tiny base); and 2. the mouth of the jar is very very small, which makes it hard to fill a fountain pen from them (and also makes it more likely that I'll tip it over in the process). You can see Nick Stewart complain about this on his blog: https://nickstewart.ink/2023/09/30/the-nebulous-plume-a-ferris-wheel-press-and-esterbrook-collaboration/

If I'm using them with a dip pen, I always decant them into dinky dips, to avoid mishaps, and also to make it easier to stir the ink while I'm using it (the shimmer falls to the bottom of the jar really fast). Of course, then I don't get to interact with the beautiful bottles while I work.

Regarding your question about the consistency of Rohrer & Klingner inks - like most other brands, it really depends on the color. I find the Helianthus to work well straight out of the bottle (the stable, wide-mouthed bottle) without any doctoring, as long as the nib is really clean and I'm using high-quality paper. Solferino (a vivid fuchsia with green-bronze sheen) is a little less predictable. Sepia bleeds a lot, so I use it mostly for painting.

Ferris Wheel inks can be variable in behavior depending on the color too - the Winterberry was a little bit disappointing that way; the Atlas Iron Ore is better behaved straight from the bottle. Both of them are better in a Parallel pen than with a dip pen. I blew through a whole bottle of Winterberry with a 6mm Parallel over the course of an intensive holiday card season - it was beautiful, but the bottle annoyed me so much. So I've moved on to other dark-red & gold inks that are in bottles that are easier to use.

With any new ink, I always make a swatch card to test the chromotography, the behavior with broad edge and pointed pen, and the reaction to bleach. The "Inkvent" threads have examples, if you're curious: https://theflourishforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=7549.0

Sorry for the extensive ink rant. I have feelings about ink. For me the sweet spot for style, quality, variety, and novelty right now is with Dominant Industries, Wearingeul (both from South Korea), and also Birmingham Pen Co. (from Pittsburgh, USA).

Here is my Beast!  And only 4 more days to go!

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 26 - 2023: Remove
« on: October 27, 2023, 12:17:41 AM »
@AnasaziWrites - Great lettering on "Remove"! I also loved the lettering on Dangerous.

@Cyril Jayant - I love this interpretation for "Remove"!

@Mary_M - My condolences on the loss of your kitty. It's nice to see your beautiful lettering here. I think we're all feeling for you.

@Erica McPhee @Lucie Y - Thank you for your thoughts on my Nasty/Dangerous. The capital N turned out way better than I had expected!

Lucie, if you like that yellow ink (which I also used on Spicy/Zesty, it's Rohrer & Klingner "Helianthus" -- you should be able to pick up a 50ml bottle for around €6 where you are. It's made in Germany, and it's one of my favorite inks! It does well with a broad nib, on a pointed pen, in a ruling pen, an automatic pen, a paintbrush... super versatile, clean, vibrant, and good shading.

Here's "Remove" - and one more try at the capital R. This time I'm quite happy with it! I used the same green ink (Pilot Iroshizuku chiku-rin) that I had tried to use on "Rise." But this time I had more patience, and generally better control over the whole situation. (although writing gigantic letters with a 1/2-inch poster nib is still a nail biter - it's really not quite the right tool for a thin "wet" ink like this).
* And since it's supposed to snow this weekend, I won't have to worry about dandelions in my garden again until June!

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 25 - 2023: Dangerous
« on: October 26, 2023, 12:13:37 AM »
Such terrific and very different takes on "Dangerous"! - They're all so cool, @AnasaziWrites @Cyril Jayant @Lucie Y

And Lucie -- your Fraktur is looking really great! The Fraktur capitals are difficult! best wishes for your class!

Thank you all for your kind thoughts about my "Shallow/Vapid" piece - it was fun to try something different and a little more conceptual.

For "Dangerous" I did another substitution: Nasty - so I get an N for my alphabet.
* And I changed the badger on the Hufflepuff House Crest to a honey badger to fit the prompt.

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Inktober 2023 / Re: Day 24 - 2023: Shallow
« on: October 25, 2023, 01:37:48 AM »
@AnasaziWrites - what a stunning photo (and cool shallow focus on the beautiful script as well). Clever!

And thank you for confirming my "bots" theory about high view counts on random posts, @Erica McPhee - as well as for your kind thoughts about my "Celestial/Heavenly". @tiffany.c.a - yes! bleach! also a bit of salt.

@Cyril Jayant - your drawings are so much fun!

This prompt ended up with a sort of conceptual piece for me: Shallow = Vapid (and I get a V for my alphabet).

Then I get some visual puns in: (hey, @Zivio - this might be your sort of thing; not exactly pedantry, but some intellectual free-associating)

The shimmer ink gives a reference to Thomas Gray's poem about a cat drowned in a bowl of goldfish, ending with the admonition:
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.


The shimmer ink on the V is Diamine's "Tempest" as in "tempest in a teapot"
The mirror in the bowl of the V mirrors the eye of the beholder.
Which is the "I" of the beholder (and my first self-portrait!)
And the ink on the "apid" of Vapid is called "Alice" from the novel "Through the Looking Glass"

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