Ink that changes color as it dries??

[KacyBG]

I'm thinking of ordering a bottle too~~it's so beautiful! Would gum Arabic improve or ruin its special effects and reduce feathering?

[jrvalverde]

Sorry for the late addition, I've been too busy over the summer. To the point. Besides Emerald of Chivor, there are many other inks that change color. Most notable are Iron Gall inks, which may suffer dramatic changes as they oxidize, Rohrer & Klingner Salix and Scabiosa come to mind, then you have as already pointed out sheen inks, like OS Nitrogen or Diamine Skull & Roses, which change in color depending on the angle of light. Troublemaker inks make some really curious (and cheap, and customizable) inks that offer a range of colours (see their web page), they are hand-made, so I can't vouch for their consistency. Some of Noodler's inks also change color when drying, but a most notable one is Rome is Burning, which changes after drying if wetted: it has two components, you write in a brown/golden color, but when wet, this smears leaving a hint of flames around the other base color, a patrician purple that is the permanent component. There are so many choices that I could go one and on. A search for sheen, iridiscent, color changing ink will likely pop up lots of reviews.

[JanisTX]

@jrvalverde Thanks for your contribution to this thread!  I'm going to investigate your recommendations!  With regard to the original ink that I was seeking, I have been investigating.  The ink does NOT behave in real life the way that it behaved in the video.  It works better if you use a broad edge nib & I'm a pointed pen kind of girl.  :-(  Even without the color morphing properties, however, the ink is very pretty & I am enjoying using it!

Janis

[jrvalverde]

Most of the inks of this kind are oversaturated and behave better when the ink laid down on the paper is more abundant, i.e. they excel in broad and wet strokes. With pointed pen, they would show in broad down strokes, specially if written slowly (and/or with a wet pen) so that more ink is deposited on the paper. The other factor is paper: in more absorbent paper the ink soaks in and thus spreads more evenly in the paper (through or across), since it is the accumulation of ink that makes them more prominent, satin, coated papers which do not absorb that much ink do work better: the ink pools on the surface of the paper and when dry the pigment is in a higher concentration enhancing the effect. It also means higher risk for bleed-through, smears, etc... unless you work with good paper. The downside, in both cases is that you have to write slowly and allow for longer time for the ink to dry. The up side is a stronger visual effect.

[K-2]

Confirming that Emeraude de Chivor is an exceptionally frustrating ink to use with pointed pen.  well, with any pen, actually.  It's my favorite ink that I love to hate, and hate to love.

The unbelievably tiny bottle neck means you need to decant it into a dinky dip or something in order to use it with pretty much any pen.  It's even a pain to fill fountain pens from.  So then you don't even get to look at the beautiful, square, wax-capped bottle while you use it.

The gold shimmer falls to the bottom almost immediately after you shake it up, so if you have a magnetic stirrer, it's good to keep it going.  Otherwise, you need to shake or stir it every 3 minutes.  not exaggerating.  Less than 5 minutes for all the shimmer to fall to the bottom.

Dosing it with a rather hefty amount of gum arabic seems to help it cling to a nib better, broad edge and especially pointed.  However, finding the right amount of gum arabic to give it a little body, while also letting it slide down a pointed nib can take some trial and error. mostly error, in my experience.

It also stains everything it touches. And it's not cheap.

Fully agree with @jrvalverde that paper makes all the difference with this ink.  The gold standard for showing off the sheen & shimmer here is the 64gsm version of Tomoegawa paper.  But the regular 52gsm Tomoegawa paper does a beautiful job too -- it's thinner, so it buckles more under the ink, and if you were hoping to mat & frame a piece with EdC on it, it will never lie completely flat.  Hot press ultra-smooth watercolor paper also works for it very well.

But it's so pretty, it's hard to give up on it.  And when you finally get it to work, it is hypnotically beautiful.

[TeresaS]

I wanted to give this ink a try, but because it is so expensive I just got a sample size in a jumbo dinky dip.  I found a lot of pointed nibs wanted to blob unexpectedly.  Last night I used a Blue pumpkin (like I saw on YouTube) and it went pretty well.  I only fully loaded the nib for big capitals, so I was redipping every couple of letters... slow but sure!  For me, a vellum that I had picked up at Joanne’s ( originally for a quilting project) worked the best. I was feeling pretty accomplished, and wiping off the ink on the dinky dip threads when Ahhhhh... not sure what happened ... except that all my ink was now on my table!!!  Luckily it wiped up alright from my table, but I had blue green fingers for the night.  Sigh... my ink is all gone... just how my life seems to roll.  Hoping maybe Santa saw and will be good to me this year!

[KacyBG]

What K-2 wrote about gum Arabic. I decanted a bit into a wide-mouthed glass jar (plastic lid) then added a good dose of the gum. Worked much better with the pointed pen. The next day, however, I found the lid sealed TIGHT. Had to use rubber gloves to open it--while standing over a stainless sink, so spatter wouldn't stain everything. After a few practices sessions, I now ask myself, "Do I have to go out in public within 24 hours? Do I have Clorox 2 nearby?" Because this ink is the sneakiest ink-smudge festival ever. Oh well. I love it!   Thanks for encouraging me to buy a bottle, everyone!

[JanisTX]

@jeanwilson :  That is fascinating!  Any idea what that ink is??

Janis

[K-2]

@JanisTX I would bet folding money that those inks in that video @jeanwilson linked to are all from the J.Herbin anniversary line(s), 1670 and 1798 - that the orange-gold ink is the Cornaline d'Egypte, the brown-gold is Caroube de Chypre, and the Blue-Green-Gold-Pink is the Emeraude de Chivor.  The first video seems to be spelling out "Chivor."

Can also confirm that they work better in the pilot parallel (as in this video) - I think the calligrapher in the video is dipping, rather than drawing from a converter reservoir.  But then paper becomes even more of an ugent issue, because the Emeraude de Chivor BLEEDS and bleeds and bleeds.  Even sometimes on Clairefontaine and Rhodia paper, which don't show that gorgeous sheen & shimmer off either!  In my experience, Caroube de Chypre is a little better behaved for dip nibs (pointed and broad edged), but the shimmer clogs fountain pen nibs right up, if not in heavy use.  It's not as beautiful as the Emeraude de Chivor, but it's about as beautiful as a brown ink can be (and truly, I compulsively buy brown inks, I love brown inks so much, so I personally think brown ink can be pretty darn beautiful, and I'm saying that this is the Emperor of brown ink).

I have spent a lot of time obsessing over these inks.  The 1798 inks at least have a more sensible, slightly wider bottle neck, so you can fill a fountain pen in them; and they don't stain everything they come into even glancing contact with like EdC.  But you still need to decant them into a dinky dip (and add gum arabic) if you want to use them with dip pens.

But for those of you in Europe - they're somewhat less expensive in the Euro zone.

By the way - many of the Pilot Iroshizuku inks also have some of this sheening quality, but it's more subtle.  And there are some Diamine and Robert Oster inks that are known as sheen queens too.  The Sailor Jentle Yama-dori ink is similar to the J.Herbin Emeraude de Chivor, insofar as it's a teal ink with russet sheen, but it doesn't have the gold shimmer.  On the other hand, it's much much easier to use.  I'd share images, but they don't always photograph in ways that really show off how beautiful the sheen is.

TLDR: there's really nothing exactly like Emeraude de Chivor.

[K-2]

OH I JUST REMEMBERED!  (am I over sharing on this thread? I have so many feels about this ink)

You can get a bunch of that sheen to show up on less smooth/fancy/expensive papers (or just other papers that aren't Tomoegawa, because sometimes you need to use a different paper for a project):  Spray the heck out of the paper with a matte fixative spray.  Let it dry completely.  Spray it again, just to be sure.  Let it dry some more.

Now you can write on it, and your overpriced J.Herbin 1670 Emeraude de Chivor will do its special color changing trick.  So will any of those other inks with sheen.  And they'll all take a good long time to dry, but they will dry.  The Iroshizuku yama-budo will be a delicious royal purple, with thin gold edging around each and every letter.  The Sailor Jentle yama-dori will glint russet copper sheen on top of a dramatically shading teal, like the mountain pheasant feathers it's named after.  And the Emeraude de Chivor will shine like the color of magic.

But EdC will still probably blob up on you; and a tiny drop of it will get on your fingers, and you won't notice it, because it's a very small drop (or maybe just a tiny smear from the threads of that dinky dip).... so then you'll touch your face or something....something that you don't want teal ink on.