Van Dieman's Ink Styx Valley Forest Green

[Michael Lew]

This is my current favourite green ink. It’s a dark green with grey undertones which performs well in most of the ways that you want an ink to perform.

• It generally gives me a nice amount of shading and has a rate of flow that must be average because I do not notice it!

• It washes out of pens easily and offers more water resistance than most of my inks: the green is mobilised by water leaving a distinct grey line behind.

• Does not feather, spread or bleed through ‘fountain pen-friendly’ paper, but spreads and bleeds through on student note quality paper (Spirax brand).

• Drying time is fairly long on smooth coated paper (Life brand) but, as you can see in the photo below, that is mostly to do with the slightly pooled bits of writing where shading would occur. On a less smooth paper (Milligram paper) the drying time is perfectly reasonable. To be honest, I was surprised by the relatively long drying time as I have never noticed smearing problems in the past.

• No sheen, despite a clear red sheen on the picture on the bottle!

Inexpensive here in Australia: AUD 14 for 30ml and AUD 20 for 50ml (about 10 and 14 US dollars). The 50ml bottle is an attractive heavy-bottomed square bottle.

The first photo is of a page in my Life Noble Note notebook, which has a very smooth cream coloured paper, and the second photo is of a page from my Milligram's Utility Collection notebook, which has white paper.

The second photo includes a couple of swatches of Blackstone green inks for comparison. (What has happend to Blackstone? They seem to have disappeared.)P1010023.jpegP1010022.jpeg