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Diamine Tudor Blue (150th Anniversary II) The ink maker from Liverpool is one of the staple brands in ink-land. They consistently produce solid inks for a very reasonable price. In 2017, Diamine released a second ink series to commemorate their 150th Anniversary. I obtained my set shortly thereafter, but more or less forgot about them when my attention drifted to Japanese inks. About time to do the reviews. Fortunately, these anniversary inks are still easily obtainable, so if you like what you see you can still get them. At first sight, this Diamine ink looks like a fairly classic Royal Blue. On second sight, it definitely is a bit softer and darker, with a hint of purple undertones. For my personal taste though, it is too close to a standard blue to pique my interest. But it still is a solid performer, and a worthwhile workhorse ink. As can be expected from Diamine, the ink performs well, and writes a saturated line in all nib sizes. With F-nibs and above a fairly pronounced shading makes its appearance. Not too bad. The ink itself is fairly saturated. It can get quite a dark shade of blue when using wet pens. Also, wet pens tend to drown out the shading in this ink. I like it best in my drier pens – really nice in the Lamy Safari with 1.1 nib. Tudor Blue prefers good quality paper. On print/copy paper, I noticed a tiny bit of feathering (especially with a wet pen), and a fair amount of show-through and little points of bleed-through. Not an ink for the cheap copy paper in the workplace. To illustrate the colour span of this Diamine ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Tudor Blue has a rather low dynamic range, and quickly saturates. Dry pens tend to match with the left part of the saturation range – and you will get nice and soft shading. Wet pens match with the right side: here the ink is really saturated, with little difference between light and dark parts. So don’t expect much in the shading department with wet writers. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved well. There is smearing, but the text itself remains crips and clear. Water resistance is non-existent though. All the blue dyes quickly disappear, leaving only some red-purple smudges behind. This can easily be deduced from the bottom part of the chromatography below - almost no ink remains in place. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap 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 a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows Tudor Blue’s preference for good quality paper. With cheaper copy/print paper there is a tiny bit of feathering, and you also get lots of see-through and bits of bleed-through. It’s best to use this ink with high quality hard-surface paper – that’s the paper eco-system that it prefers. In my opinion, this is a white-paper ink. On cream paper it looks a bit sickly – the yellow shining through doesn’t combine well with the blue tones of the ink. Drying times for this ink are mostly in the 5-10 second range with a Lamy Safari M-nib. Because scans don't always capture an ink's colour and contrast with good precision, I also add a photo to give you an alternative look on this Diamine ink. In this case, the phote gives the closest match. The scans show too bright a blue, but still give you a good feel of the differences in behaviour across multiple types of paper. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a Pelikan M120 with M-nib, and an Edison Collier with 1.1. stub. I personally like this Tudor Blue best with the dry-writing Safari pens. Related inks To compare Diamine Tudor Blue 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. The ink is fairly similar to others in the grid – if you already have a blue in this range, there’s really no need to acquire this one. Inkxperiment – Singin' in the Rain As a personal challenge, I always try to draw an interesting little painting using only the ink I’m reviewing. This part of the review literally guarantees a moment of joy and creative challenge – I simply love exploring inks this way. A little while before doing this review I had a song that got stuck in my head. Everyone knows that silly tune from the 1952 musical “Singin’ in the Rain”, with Gene Kelly dancing through puddles on the street. I have no idea how that tune wormed its way into my head, but it definitely was annoying – a real earworm. Anyway… my inspiration for this inkxperiment is obvious now. I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I taped out the tree trunk with washi tape, and then used a sponge with water-diluted ink to draw in the background. Next I used a paintbrush to add the cloud and rain puddles on the ground. I then used the rough end of a kitchen sponge to stamp in the foliage on the tree. After removing the washi tape, I used a plastic card with pure Tudor Blue to draw the tree trunk. The mother and child were drawn in using my B-nib Safari. To finish the painting, I used a toothpick dipped in ink to draw the raindrops. The resulting drawing is not too bad composition-wise, but Tudor Blue did not really succeed to bring the drawing to life… there is not enough contrast, which makes the drawing a bit flat-looking. On the positive side, this little picture shows what can be achieved with this Diamine ink in a more artistic context (not much, I’m afraid 😉 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. I first used Irfanview with its Metallic Ice filter to create more or less a negative of the original drawing. Next, I used a PicsArt color filter to extend the colour range. A Photoleap Urban Art filter added the red & yellow tones – but I kept the blue in the umbrellas and tree trunk. I finally retouched the little girl to add more yellow to her dress. I like the thunderstorm atmosphere of the end result and the final colour palette that works quite well. Conclusion Diamine Tudor Blue is a fairly standard blue – a bit softer and darker than your run-of-the-mill royal blue. Not an exciting ink colour – my opinion of course. Not a bad ink, but also not a must-have. If you have other blues that are close, there’s no real reason to obtain this one. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types