The ‘Right’ Way To Do Ink Reviews To Serve One's Curiosity And Interests?

[cellmatrix]

He does a British voice for this randy professor lobster, which I find very funny.

 

Yes he is really funny, I like his pen reviews too. Sandy1 adds a bit of wit as well which adds nicely to her thorough ink analysis. Humor can be a great addition to an ink review, no doubt.

[Honeybadgers]

To be honest, I don't recall seeing too many examples of such a tool being used to produce graduated and/or multi-pass colour swatches; most of what I've seen of such looks like they were produced with q-tips or the like, and the stripes on ink with neat edges are usually single-pass.

 

 

SBRE Brown, Matt from the pen habit, and David from figboot, as well as mike mattison ( think his name is) all do it. I just didn't think to mention it because it's not something I find relevant in an ink review. I never see an ink used in a multi-pass regard outside of art, where there is usually washing (rendering the Q tip more valuable) so, personally, I don't find it useful.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[A Smug Dill]

I never see an ink used in a multi-pass regard outside of art,

Firstly, multi-pass of ink at a given spot does occur in writing, even in English – when writing lowercase 'f' and 't', and I don't know about you, but it happens when I write uppercase 'A' and 'H', etc. – but especially in Asian langauges (Chinese hanzi, Japanese kana and kanji, and so on).

 

Secondly, my goal is to show some semblance of a scale of how the particular ink will look at different levels of 'wetness'. I don't care about anyone's particular EDC pen (or any other pen) or how the ink will appear in writing coming out of it, but I do care about showing the range of colours (hue, saturation and intensity) an ink can display on the page, and leave it to the interested prospective user to find the right pen/nib and paper combination to elicit the desired colour(s) within that range from the ink.

[Honeybadgers]

Your first point is kind of moot. a crossed t, f, are not really good examples, a nib backfilling is not the same as multiple passes (I've done plenty of art with inks myself, layering dry inks is not going to give the same result as wet on wet. wet on wet painting vs wet on dry yield very different results)

 

That said, your second point is actually pretty insightful. I don't agree that it'll be as accurate as a writing sample or heavy wet application vs dry, but I do think it's not a bad way to show saturation at multiple levels of nib wetness. that's a good point I hadn't considered.

 

I have a question, how many damn languages do you speak?

Edited November 9, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[A Smug Dill]

I have a question, how many damn languages do you speak?

Just two: English and (the Cantonese dialect of) Chinese.

 

I can 'write' Japanese kana (which is analogous to the alphabet in English), as in I know what each character looks likes and the stroke order for putting it on paper, and how to pronounce it, but I cannot read a piece of text in Japanese per se; I may rely on understanding Japanese kanji (literally, 'Chinese characters') using my knowledge of written Chinese to get the general gist of signs and short notices, but sometimes I get things wrong.

 

So, essentially I can copy a piece of Japanese writing if it is shown to me, but chances are I won't fully understand what it means.

[A Smug Dill]

@pjford, what has that got to do with (amateur/'casual') users doing ink reviews? Or is that your suggestion for achieving, maintaining and/or improving efficiency in producing user reviews of individual inks?

[bobje]

What I find relevant about Mr. Ford’s inclusion of the nib demos is the way it shows different shades of the same ink depending on nib type.

[A Smug Dill]

@Bobje,

 

Shading is less of a function of the (physically measurable) nib width, or the angle at which the tip is cut, or whether the corners of the nib are sharp or rounded, than it is that of the 'wetness' of a nib.

 

As far as I'm concerned, as a reviewer and a fountain pen user, it is far more meaningful to show a range of different nibs that lay down similar line widths, and whether the colour and shading appear differently for them. It shows the potential of the ink – nay, more than that; it demonstrates what has been actually achieved by at least one user (i.e. the reviewer), not just the theoretical potential, and not just under the manufacturer's particular set of controlled conditions in its laboratory.

 

There is no point for me to close/narrow the gap between which equipment and materials I use for an ink review, and with/on what a (or every) faceless prospective reader of the review may have in mind to use the ink. It's up to the reader to extrapolate based on the data and information presented, without any assurance that the guesswork will be correct or accurate. It has been suggested to me that the review methodology ought to be clearly spelt out for the reader, and I think that is useful, so that a reader could attempt to replicate the results using the same methodology – including type of equipment, material, and technique used – if he/she desires to obtain the same results out of the ink as has been demonstrated in the review. Whether the individual reader wants to use the same type of nib, or paper, or handwriting style as the reviewer for his/her own use cases is irrelevant to the purpose and production of an ink review.

[XYZZY]

It has been suggested to me that the review methodology ought to be clearly spelt out for the reader, and I think that is useful, so that a reader could attempt to replicate the results using the same methodology – including type of equipment, material, and technique used – if he/she desires to obtain the same results out of the ink as has been demonstrated in the review. Whether the individual reader wants to use the same type of nib, or paper, or handwriting style as the reviewer for his/her own use cases is irrelevant to the purpose and production of an ink review.

 

I'm not interested in reading your methodology for the purpose of reproducing your review. However, a writeup of the methodology is very interesting to me for a different reason: I can consider which aspects of your review are directly relevant to me, which might need some "translation" before being relevant to me, and which aspects might be even remotely predictive for me. I originally wrote "not useful", but that's not correct: I can find an ink review "useful" for entertainment or aesthetic value, even if it's not remotely predictive of what I might see.

 

Also, you're putting a fair amount of thought into this (both your own ideas, and feedback from others), and a summary of methodology is basically a distillation of all the conversations that led up to that point.

[bobje]

Sounds good, Dill. Looking forward to reading your reviews.

[A Smug Dill]

Sounds good, Dill. Looking forward to reading your reviews.

Thanks. I have posted a few 'incomplete' ones so far, because I haven't quite worked out what a 'full' review in my book ought to and can viably include, and the methodology for producing all of it.

 

Right now my writing hand is a bit handicapped and I cannot write more than four lines at a time without exacerbating the injury. It's most frustrating!

[TSherbs]

This is now a 6-page analysis of what a review might be. How long is the actual review going to be?

[minddance]

please show us the review already.

[A Smug Dill]

please show us the review already.

As I said above, I've already done a few 'incomplete'/'quickie' ink reviews last month and posted them on FPN. I can't do any this month because of tendonitis in my writing hand, and I'll be away from home for a few weeks from the end of this month.

[thesmellofdustafterrain]

This is a really interesting thread. Great questions.

 

I've been reading a lot of ink reviews these last few months. I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to share their experiences with the inks.

 

Some of the things I like to see

 

• how the ink performs on different papers (including cheap stuff)
• what the reviewer's experience is after having written with the ink for a week or so.
• Follow up data, especially for inks that are supposed to change over time.
• what things the reviewer felt were relevant to a good ink.
• what situation they use the ink for
• how the ink responds to a highlighter

I also really appreciate the waterproof testing. Something to add to that would be waterproof testing within a few minutes of writing, and another waterproof test when the writing is at least 24 hours old.

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

Some of the things I like to see

Thank you for your ideas about what you'd like to see in ink reviews, which I assume match your interests as an ink reviewer, and therefore what you would work into your ink review methodology to cover prospectively.

[thesmellofdustafterrain]

I plan to do ink reviews soon - that's why I'm reading so many.

 

One of the things I wonder about is colour accuracy. When I take a photo of something for size, I put a rule near it for scale. Is there some sort of tool like this to help calibrate colour accuracy?

[A Smug Dill]

Yes, there are colour calibration charts that you can place inside the frame of a photo (in the background, or as another artefact) or in the scan area.

Edited March 26, 2019 by A Smug Dill

[Karmachanic]

 

One of the things I wonder about is colour accuracy. When I take a photo of something for size, I put a rule near it for scale. Is there some sort of tool like this to help calibrate colour accuracy?

 

Then may I suggest you calibrate your monitor in addition to adding an 11 step gray scale to the review

[Tom Kellie]

This is a really interesting thread. Great questions.

 

I've been reading a lot of ink reviews these last few months. I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to share their experiences with the inks.

 

Some of the things I like to see

 

• how the ink performs on different papers (including cheap stuff)
• what the reviewer's experience is after having written with the ink for a week or so.
• Follow up data, especially for inks that are supposed to change over time.
• what things the reviewer felt were relevant to a good ink.
• what situation they use the ink for
• how the ink responds to a highlighter

I also really appreciate the waterproof testing. Something to add to that would be waterproof testing within a few minutes of writing, and another waterproof test when the writing is at least 24 hours old.

 

~ the-smell-of-dust-after-rain:

 

Thank you for your comments above. They're helpful to me.

I'd never considered the effect of a highlighter, as I've never used one on anything written in ink.

Waterproof testing baffles me, which reflect how little I know. I've never been in any situation where water affected ink on paper.

Your comments about follow-up data, and the experience with an ink after one week make excellent sense to me.

After reading through this thread one takeaway idea is that of using a Medium nib in a review. I'd neglected to consider how that might be helpful to others.

I hope that you did finally post an ink review. If so, I've somehow overlooked it.

Tom K.