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Ink View: Margi Gras Indians Purple: An Ink homage to one of MANY Mardi Gras Secrecies! So here we have the 4th installation of the limited edition inks. I would have liked this to be ready to go before the launch of the ink (gone by now) a couple of weeks ago, but the mail system here in Canada hasn’t been that kind, however it is picking up now J and as I am putting this up I will be getting the sample of the next one up Garden District Azalea, so look for my view on this one in a couple of days! PS: A quick peek is at the end ! Once again a big thanks to Papier Plume for sending me this sample, this is a really nice purple and one named after another good piece of history. And off we go! The Mardi Gras Indians (The brief – brief history) The Mardi Gras Indians is one of many New Orleans secrecies, and one of that surrounds the Mardi Gras festival. The Indians are made of African-American communities that had taken the name Indians in honor of the native Americans who during the time of oppression and slavery assisted in their freedom. Sounds nice and all, but at the beginning (and it seems that it was around a century ago, the different Indian organizations (tribes) had their disputes, and these were often violent and used the Mardi Gras to “settle” those scores as the police would have had a difficult time to do their enforcement as a result of the overly crowed city and busy streets that the Mardi Gras festival would bring. Now all is in the past. Today seeing Mardi Gras Indians are one of those things that if you go attend the Mardi Gras, and you are not attentive, you’ll miss. Their parades are not scheduled, happen at odd times and at random locations. The tribes will form a krewe – a group task with the parade – who will then give themselves a name for that moment. There will be a leader – The Big Chief who will guide and decide where the parade will go, and if the tribe meets another tribe there is an exchange between the tribes, this is reflected in dance (based on traditional African dance movement), singing and a little taunting of their suits. Their suits (not costumes) , and this is where our purple will be coming from, are full of vibrant colors resembling Native American ceremonial apparel. This apparel is made out of elaborate intrinsic designs, using a variety of materials, including feathers, beads and sequins. Some of the suits will take months and months to prepare, and will include a hefty amount of symbolism embedded within. So what does Indians’ suits look like? Something like this: This is just one of the many and unique expressions of a Mardi Gras Indian’s suit, as each suit is particular to that Indian. Would this then mean that there are many expressions of colors including the purple? and that may vary from suit to suit, correct? Correct. So what about PP’s ink? Well let’s just say that it falls (in my opinion) in that middle part of the spectrum of purple. But let’s see more in detail! The Mardi Gras Indians (The ink view) – Purple The 4th installment, out of five, that were intended to commemorate the city of New Orleans. Mardi G-P (for short ) follows the previous inks of this line: Street Car Green , Calle Real and Sazerac. A purple ink that reflects the color found on that of Mardi Gras Indians’ suits (see pic above). Here is how the production bottles looked like And here is the Swab From a first glance you will notice a couple of things: some degree in shading , looks like this is a little more saturated that it’s previous counterparts, and some feathering! Let’s look at this more in depth So how I looked at this view? Pens: I used three pens this time One fine/EF (Platinum President – Fine Nib ) , One Medium ( Faber Castell Emotion – Medium) and one BROAD – modified Mnemosyne, with a custom Broad Waverly Nib ! Paper: Tomoe River, Rhodia, Clairefountaine Thriomphe (CF), traditional copy paper , laid paper and Vellum ß this one courtesy of Barkingpig , thank you Sir! . Tests: Flow, saturation, shading, sheen, bleed-through, see-through/show-through, feathering and pooling. With other tests such as water, bleach and alcohol and dry times. Sometimes it will be a yes/no answer, sometimes 1-5 (1 being poor, 5 being excellent) Crossover Card My way to see all the papers and how the ink behaves across. You can see that each column is representative of the paper used. Thoughts on the ink-paper behavior Flow: Flow is good, very fluid, consistent across all papers and pens usedSaturation: Medium/High, sometimes it looked more saturated depending on the paper, there is definitely less shading on this ink than in the other releases..Sheen: None, Zip, Nada.Shade: There I shading on this ink, again no as drastic as with the other inks in this collection, but there is shading, the shading on this ink is more gradual. Bleed-through: On copy paper , now I was using a very wet nib, but it went through quickly.Show-through: There is some slight, very slight on most papers, I’ve circled the ones where this happened, more intense on the vellum, but that is expected. You would be able to write on both sides on most quality papers .Feathering: Now, I was using a wet nib and that might have contributed to some of the feathering, but I’ll say that this ink in wet-heavy pens will leave a lot of ink on the paper and will feather – not much but it will. Please take note that you the paper you are using is sensitive to the oils of your hand this ink will feather where the oils mix with the paper.Pooling: (This is not the shading but more on the pooling on the edges of the letters, I enjoy when the inks provide this). There was none that I could observe in any of the papersWater Resistance: The tests shown on the card were done using an eyedropper, leaving it a few seconds then using a tissue paper to retrieve the excess. But offline I did a more smear/spread test. Tests show that the ink has some waterproofness, however it is not a WP ink. You would be able recover the writing if need you need to. Big shout to Tomoe river as the ink just held on to the paper, for a paper that rejects ink by nature it is a bit odd. Alcohol Resistance: Very consistent across. You would be able to recover from this one – almost no effect. Where it shows that the ink has gone from the comparison is where the bleach spread to.Bleach Resistance: None, Zip , nada. Dry Times: As noted this is a wet ink and the drying times were there to support it with drying times that were around the 20sec mark and on some papers longer than that. On copy paper it is almost immediate, I’ll say this is because the ink is so watery that goes through quickly between the fibers One thing I had mentioned before, it is how easy is to clean any of PP’s inks from the pens. I would attribute this to the fact that they are not meant to be waterproof, as well as that they are not viscose and not too saturated. Ink Comparison Ink NameMakerOverall notesSolferinoR&KVery bright – lots of sheen (gold) – on the high of being the most violet of them allViolet BlueGvFCNew of GvFC a light Violet blue ink with good shading on moderate to heavy wet pens – see the middle sample on the two big shades this ink gives.Gummy berryKWZBig shout to Barkingpig for this one as well, more purple than blue ,very fruit like – good shadingWood VioletAnderson PensVery dry ink – good shading – the spectrum for this on is middle to darkMardi Gras Indians PurplePapier PlumeThe featured InkTenebris PurpiratumFCSomehow dry ink with good shading – however starts on the darker portion of the spectrumGrapeDiamineOn the Mnemosyne looked VERY similar to Mardi G-P, but on the sketch paper (the one in the middle) you can see that the grape is darker in all senses.Dark LilacLamySuper saturated, golden sheen, shading ink from dark to darker!Purple PazzazzDiamineInk with sparkles, good shading, and nice sparkles Grey PlumKWZDark, dark – however still manages to shade I realized now, that I had more purples that I imagined and I didn’t even show them all. But hopefully you can see that the Mardi G-P is indeed a medium hue purple, which is good in terms of shading since it can go from light to dark on that range. And here is a (quick) sketch of a Mardi Gars Indian using Mardi G-P - wasn’t as quick this time Here is some Cursive and Block writing for reference. Opinion This is a good purple, is subtle and has some fun to it, it is a wet ink, but this is very characteristic of the PP inks, so you should handle it with care on wet nibs. This is an ink that shows waterproof-ness. On finer nibs It is pleasant to read but as it is a wet ink will also be looking a slightly more than average dry times, again it all depends on the paper and how wet you nib is. To my later point be careful with possible feathering. This is not the more friendly ink you might want to use on copy paper. I’m very grateful that I got this sample, and happy to have this ink as part of the – now that I see – seemingly long list of purples. Availability As noted at the beginning of this view this is now sold out. For this release Papier Plume did 60 1 Oz / 30ml bottles. There is one more ink of this series and this one will have the same number of bottles. The name of the ink is Garden District Azalea – On sale September 16, 2016 (sample at the end of the View). Papier Plume notifies their ink availability through their newsletter first (link), then Instagram, then Facebook, and finally twitter (in that order). AND Here is a not so known story about this ink and why was purple and not another of the equally deserved colors of the Indians’ suits : “After the first one was released someone called about the green. While talking he asked if we were going to make a purple. At the time we only had 4 of the 5 colors. But I told him that it wasn't likely. He gave me his email address anyway to get on the mailing list. His email address had the word Tribe in it and he told me that he was a Cleveland Indians fan. So after I hung up I decided that the next color would be named after the Mardi Gras Indians and would be purple.” This is in my opinion a great story and another example of the influence we each carry (if you are not a fan of the Cleveland Indians, please don’t get mad). Now, how do I get to influence someone to do a likeness of me on an ink…. Still thinking And Now Garden District AZALEA!!! The (re)View on this will be up Monday/Tuesday! Remember the release is Friday the 16thJ Thanks for reading until the end!