Inky Gradient: Susemai Blue Ball Diamond 16% To Distilled Water

[vossad01]

An Inky Gradient

Depicted in order:

 

LineRatioConcentration

110:016.00%

210:114.55%

310:213.33%

410:312.31%

510:411.43%

610:510.67%

710:610.00%

810:79.41%

910:88.89%

1010:98.42%

1110:108.00%

1210:108.00%

1310:108.00%

149:107.58%

158:107.11%

167:106.59%

176:106.00%

185:105.33%

194:104.57%

203:103.69%

212:102.67%

221:101.45%

 

 

Strathmore Writing (25% cotton, natural white, wove, 24lb):



Georgia Pacific Multipurpose Paper (20 lb, bright white, Walmart):



Southworth Diamond White (25% cotton, white, 20lb):




Why I did it:
Because I thought it would be valuable as part of the Susemai Ink Testing https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/268798-do-you-want-to-be-an-ink-tester/. Susemai instructs dilution to a 2% to 8% concentration, this lets you see the implications of the percentage you choose.

Why you might recreate any of these mixes:
This ink became available for sale and you are mixing it up.

Remarks:
Higher concentrations seemed to be smoother. The light color of this ink is certainly a result of the dyes use rather than the concentration; dilution did not move the color very fast.


I am waiving my general disclaimer about mixing with water, because this ink is intended to be mixed up with water for most of the posted dilution range.

[white_lotus]

This is interesting to see that at least with this ink, very great dilutions aren't recommended. Personally if I were doing something like this, I'd skip every other dilution since there doesn't seem to be enough difference between some of them. At least to buy eyes. What do you think?

[vossad01]

I forgot to mention that the scanner did so some clipping of lightest tint. The text is complete on the page, but yes, it is light. If using for writing, I would say to not go below 4%, and I probably would not go that low even. With this ink I must already assume you like writing with light colors.

 

Doing larger increments is tempting because it would save time. What has me with the current setup is that is it hard to predict where interesting things happen and what people will use this for. For example, in Noodler's Red to Noodlers Blue there is a fairly consistent change in the gradient while Noodler's Yellow Noodler's Red shows much more variation in the first five or so lines. If I am just wondering about making lighter colors, I could drop the first half, like I did with Dark Matter, but then it is not useful to people wondering how much water they can add to stretch their inks. Does that make sense?

 

If more people think the gradient with a larger increment would be just as valuable, I will probably change.

 

10:1 (or vice versa) tends to be an interesting jump, so if I were coming up with a reduced set of ratios to do, I almost think I would need to look at a non-linear gradient.

[amberleadavis]

Wow, these are a lot of work. Thank you for doing this.

[white_lotus]

Thanks for the explanation vossad01. I can understand that inks will have differing concentrations originally and how they'll react to the addition of water. So I'm sure there will be people interested in the results if you're interested enough in doing them. They look great.

 

My experience in doing color/mixing gradients is with watercolor, so it's not so precise in measurements, and when you mix you're looking for the next mixture that's different. Probably hard to do with the ink that way.

 

Thanks!

[amberleadavis]

BTW, you should add these images or at least the links to the main review.