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Ink Mix – Depuydt Green 2 parts : Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite 5 parts : Pelikan Edelstein Golden Beryl A colleague of mine is entering retirement shortly, and I wanted to present her with a personalized greeting card for this occasion. And to make it even more personal, I decided to create a special-edition green colour using a mix of the Pelikan Edelstein inks Tanzanite and Golden Beryl. I tried out some combinations in an Ink Shift experiment, and the current mix turned out to be a beautiful muted moss-green. And because it’s a personalized ink, it gets her name: “Depuydt Green.” “Depuydt Green” is brewed by mixing 2 parts of Edelstein Tanzanite with 5 parts of Edelstein Golden Beryl. This mix resulted in a stunning muted grey-moss-green colour that totally fits my taste and that is worthy of the occasion. For the writing samples in this review, I used a mix without the Golden Beryl shimmer particles. For the drawing, Golden Beryl’s golden shimmer was allowed into the mix (and I must admit that it works quite well within this Depuydt Green). See below for a swab with the golden shimmer particles included. This new ink writes fairly wet and well-lubricated in my Safari test pens. Contrast with the paper is excellent, even with EF nibs. This Depuydt Green shades nicely too – not harsh, but with a soft presence and aesthetically very pleasing. I like this mix a lot! To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a piece of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Depuydt Green has a medium tonal range. Contrast between light and dark parts is not too harsh, resulting in soft and elegant shading. For me, the sweet spot for this ink lies in the less saturated range – which translates to dry-writing pens and/or finer nibs. I prefer to use this mix with EF/F/M nibs, where the moss-green colour comes out the best. The resulting mix shows fairly good water resistance, undoubtedly inherited from its Tanzanite heritage. Short exposures to water flush away the yellow component dyes, leaving a blue-grey residue behind that remains perfectly readable. This is also clear from the bottom part of the chromatography. This added water resistance makes Depuydt Green a good ink for use at the office. I have tested the ink on a variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. Below I show you the ink’s appearance and behaviour on different paper types. On every small band of paper, I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Safari fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari A small text quote, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a Pelikan M200 with M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The Depuydt Green mix behaved perfectly on most of the paper types I used, with excellent behaviour all-around. It even works with the notoriously bad Moleskine paper: just a tiny bit of feathering, but you still get bleed-through (so you won’t be able to use the backside of the paper). Drying times with the M-nib are fairly short in the 5-10 second range. The ink looks good on both white and cream-coloured paper, but the muted grey-green look works best with pure white paper. The scan above shows a bit too much yellow. I therefore add a photo of the same writing, which is almost spot-on colourwise. Related inks To compare this mix with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Depuydt Green looks fairly similar to Graf von Faber Castell Olive Green (which has a touch more yellow in the mix). Inkxperiment – A History of ICTS I always enjoy doing a small drawing using only the ink I’m reviewing. In this case, the inkxperiment was used on the invitation card for the thank-you party we’re organizing. The drawing summarizes the history of our university’s IT department. Its origins are pictured in the circles on the left: the University Computing Centre (abbreviated URC in Dutch), the Computer Science group and the Administrative Information Processing group (abbreviated AIV in Dutch). These groups merged over time to form the current IT department (ICTS in Dutch, symbolized by the pyramid on the right – and written out in ASCII code on the pyramid), with Annemie as our CIO. With the help of all our co-workers, we built a smoothly running organization that is prepared for the future. Our department’s one-liner motto’s are enscribed in Pigpen cypher code on the drawing. Oh… and you may have noticed the little fisherman in the drawing … it’s not always work-work-work, we sometimes take a break 😉. For this inkxperiment, I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I taped out the pyramid and some other parts with washi tape, and used water-diluted ink to fill in the background, with a darker region at the bottom. After removing the washi tape, I used a piece of cardboard with pure Depuydt Green (with shimmer particles) to draw in the lines – resulting in a nice shimmer effect. Next I drew the circles on the left and filled circles and pyramid with ink. I added the circuit-board lines with a dip pen and bleach (this ink mix reacts really well with bleach). Finally I drew in my co-workers, and added the capping stone to the ICTS pyramid (which symbolizes the end of a career). The result is a one-image history of our university’s IT department, that also shows what can be achieved with this Depuydt Green ink mix in a more artistic context. In my opinion, this ink is simply great for drawing! Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. For this computational derivation, I applied a couple of filters that zoomed in on the main subject, and added a mosaic of colours, that I toned down to a more muted pallet. The end result is not too bad, but in this case I like the green original more. Conclusion Depuydt Green is an ink mix that really impressed me: it is a stunningly beautiful muted moss-green that works well with all kinds of nibs and papers, and that is especially nice for drawing. Fabulous!