Mystery Inks #48, #49, and #50 !!

[Chrissy]

MI #48 First thoughts.

A pale pinkish brown that starts off feeling dry. Seems to feel better after a few days inside the pen. I like the colour. The ink I found most similar is Tono & Lims Gemini's Duality but I don't have any to sample. My Epson V600 scan looks quite accurate in today's UK daylight. The TR paper in my Seven Seas Writer Journal is cream not white.

MI#48.jpeg
MI#48 1.jpeg

[LizEF]

Great color reproduction, Chrissy!

[countrydirt]

My writing looks exactly like all of yours as far as color, but my camera won't pick up that. I wrote my samples on clairefontaine and all 3 inks give some shading, but my camera won't show that. I also wrote in a Baron Fig notebook with pretty absorbent paper. This brought out more color with very subtle shading, but the lines are pretty thick. The italic nib has absolutely no line variation on that paper. MI #49 bled through like crazy on the BF paper, but shows a wonderful rich blue regardless. MI 48 was as dry as anything I've used over the past 10 years or so. 50 is very grey in the BF notebook but on the CF paper it is more of a blackish/purple with good line variation.

[LizEF]

My writing looks exactly like all of yours as far as color, but my camera won't pick up that. ...

Some colors are really hard to capture. I'm not satisfied with any of my pictures of these inks so far, except the microscope image. I'll try some more of those today. If you happen to have any sunny days soon (wrong month, right?), you could try taking pictures in the sun - that can help a lot.

[Sailor Kenshin]

My writing looks exactly like all of yours as far as color, but my camera won't pick up that. I wrote my samples on clairefontaine and all 3 inks give some shading, but my camera won't show that. I also wrote in a Baron Fig notebook with pretty absorbent paper. This brought out more color with very subtle shading, but the lines are pretty thick. The italic nib has absolutely no line variation on that paper. MI #49 bled through like crazy on the BF paper, but shows a wonderful rich blue regardless. MI 48 was as dry as anything I've used over the past 10 years or so. 50 is very grey in the BF notebook but on the CF paper it is more of a blackish/purple with good line variation.

My #50 goes down dark, then lightens to a brown/gray…at least on Kokuyo Campus paper.

[Chrissy]

My writing looks exactly like all of yours as far as color, but my camera won't pick up that. I wrote my samples on clairefontaine and all 3 inks give some shading, but my camera won't show that. I also wrote in a Baron Fig notebook with pretty absorbent paper. This brought out more color with very subtle shading, but the lines are pretty thick. The italic nib has absolutely no line variation on that paper. MI #49 bled through like crazy on the BF paper, but shows a wonderful rich blue regardless. MI 48 was as dry as anything I've used over the past 10 years or so. 50 is very grey in the BF notebook but on the CF paper it is more of a blackish/purple with good line variation.

If your paper is white then you may be able to adjust the colour balance of that to white and it might not throw out the ink colour too much.
I used to have problems getting ink colour exactly right when I had my old printer that included a scanner. When we bought the new printer that doesn't have a scanner we pushed the boat out and bought the Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner and now I hardly ever have to adjust anything. Maybe I sometimes just make sure white paper looks white by using a curves layer in Adobe Photoshop but more often I don't need to adjust anything other than resizing that I always do before uploading to anywhere on the web.

[LizEF]

Here are a few more.... Quotes on 68gsm Tomoe River (cream / ivory), scanned, no correction (inks: 49, 48, 50):



Sheen for #49:



Sheen for #50 (hard to see, but there):



Off to do microscope slides now. Will let you know how it goes...

[LizEF]

Off to do microscope slides now. Will let you know how it goes...

#48 is yawnville. One solid pinkish brown, almost a Caucasian flesh tone, but not quite. The only exception is outside the slip cover, there are some areas of bright pink, like we can see in the chromatography.

#49 has not changed since I posted the previous microscope image - lots of barbs all over and I can clearly see areas of red sheen at the edges of shapes.

#50 Seems almost to have entirely evaporated. Had I not numbered the slides, I would have thought the slide for 48 was for 50 and vice versa: slide 48, the ink darkened, slide 50, the ink all but disappeared. Under the scope, I can only find interesting stuff at the edges of the slip cover - and yes, it is interesting! I did some pictures with the cell phone because the ink was too dark/ thick for the microscope camera to pick up color and detail.

First, 100x, a part of the ink that remains in the middle of the slide - very pale. In most places, I don't even have this. And doesn't it look a lot like #48's color!?



Next, we have a plant growing from the edge of the slip cover. 400x. This is with the microscope software, to show details:



And the same plant, but with the cell phone camera, to show color. Still 400x:



And finally, another spot along the slip cover, 100x, cell phone, to show color:



The "lacy" bit on the right side of this photo is what most of the rest of the slide looked like, but less densely clustered.

ETA: Even the cell phone doesn't cover it, but especially in that last image, there's a very dark forest green sort of color along with the browns and bright orange.

[Yazeh]

Those microscopic images are gorgeous! At one point I thought, maybe it's Herbin Nude but that's too pale
I love those quotes, btw!

[LizEF]

Those microscopic images are gorgeous! At one point I thought, maybe it's Herbin Nude but that's too pale
I love those quotes, btw!

I had the same thought about Herbin Nude, and came to the same conclusion. Thought I'd use some of the longer, fun quotes that I don't want to use in reviews - cuz they're long. I have scads of them.

[Yazeh]

This ink is high maintenance, it really has specific preference for nib and paper.
The Ultra flex line was primed before hence the dark line. In reality it couldn't handle the railroading...

48 - Rhodia.jpg

[Sailor Kenshin]

One added benefit from this ink testing: #48 LOVES being in that TWSBI Go. On Kokuyo Campus paper it's a real delight.

[Yazeh]

I would have to admit, that I'm glad I'm done reviewing this ink. I think I even disliked this more that De Atramentis Artist Sepia.
I don't like wishy washy inks. Yesterday, I was taking notes, and I could read what I was writing.

I consider mystery #48 and artist ink. Great for sketching...not for writing at least for me


48 - Midori.jpg

48 - TR-68gr.jpg

[countrydirt]

I decided to try the dry ink in a Lamy 2000. While it is much wetter in this pen, it’s still pretty dry.

This photo captures the color a bit better, although it doesn’t show as much pink on the smears as in real life.

I’ll journal write with this for a few days.


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[Yazeh]

@country dirt, elegant handwriting. That's a very wide EF, if I may say so

[countrydirt]

Thank you Yazeh. This paper is quite absorbent and tends to make every nib write broader than on TR or Rhodia paper by at least 2X.

[LizEF]

Did some water testing:



End result for #48:



End result for #49 (demon bled all over my grey card! )



End result for #50

[LizEF]

[I decided to try the dry ink in a Lamy 2000. While it is much wetter in this pen, it’s still pretty dry.

This photo captures the color a bit better, although it doesn’t show as much pink on the smears as in real life.

I’ll journal write with this for a few days.

Very nice, countrydirt! Unlike Yazeh, I rather like this ink, despite its lack of lubrication.

[Yazeh]

[I decided to try the dry ink in a Lamy 2000. While it is much wetter in this pen, it’s still pretty dry.

This photo captures the color a bit better, although it doesn’t show as much pink on the smears as in real life.

I’ll journal write with this for a few days.

Very nice, countrydirt! Unlike Yazeh, I rather like this ink, despite its lack of lubrication.

So we'll see an Effnir?

[Yazeh]

My water test is less elegant than Liz's and no twiddling thumbs
This was 20 seconds under running water...

48 - Watertest.jpeg