Van Dieman's Ink : Blackened Seas

[Licue]

Van Dieman's Ink : Blackened Seas

The Midnight Series

 

Van Dieman's Ink is a Tasmanian company which offers a variety of inks in several groups/themes.

Blackened Seas is an ink from their Midnight Series.

 

 

Blackened Seas is available (only) as bottled ink.

There seems to have been some back-and-forth(?) changes with bottle design at VD's Ink; my Blackened Seas came in the original(?) bottle which is shaped somewhat oddly and probably not ideal for filling directly from the bottle tbh. But at least it works well for keeping the ink inside (which unfortunatly cannot be said for all bottle types they tried...).

I paid 10,50€ for 30ml which I consider a medium to medium-high price.

Package/label design with the ink-colored moon (and name and theme) is really nice imo.

 

 

It's a dark teal, a little bit more on the blue than on the green side, with a slightly muted undertone.

Rohrer & Klingner Verdigris' color looks kinda close, maybe a bit bluer. But performance wise and in chromatography Blackened Seas seems to share more similarities with inks like Lamy Petrol and ONLINE Nachtblau.

 

(chromatography left to right: R&K Verdigris, VD's Blackened Seas, Lamy Petrol, Online Nachtblau)

 

Drytime is medium to longish even from the Platinum Prefounte (M) which is not a particularly wet writer. Thinly/normally applied Blackened Seas does not smear after drying - however if the pen brings a bit more ink to the paper and the paper in question is Oxford Optik Paper there may be some prolonged smearing risk (look for example at the "VAN" in the heading: this happened several hours after writing).

 

 

 

 

 

In ink splashes the edges can show a little bit of dark reddish sheen. Occassionally a tiny bit of sheen can also be seen in writing - but this tends to come at the price of even longer dry times and increased risk of smearing, so personally I'd rather not try to coerce sheen out of this ink.

 

 

Blackened Seas is not waterproof. When in contact with water quite a lot of turquoise/bright teal looking color gets washed away. It does show some water resistance though: even after having been fully submerged in water for several hours a darkish, readable line remains.

 

 

I did not notice any feathering on the papers used in this test. There were two tiny spots of writing bleeding through (NoNonsense on Talentus, Fashion II on Clairefontaine) but really only very little, hardly worth mentioning.

 

Ink flow is medium, I think (but I still find it pretty hard to accurrately judge things like this). 

It generally worked nicely in the Jinhao Shark and the Prefounte, but occasionally I noticed some near skipping/thin line issues on slick paper (especially Clairefontaine) that had been in contact with hand oils (I actually rewrote the excerpt on the Clairefontaine with a sheet of paper under my hand because of this) - though I'm not sure if this should be blamed solely on the ink.

(Performance considerations aside, this Prefounte fits the ink nearly perfectly in regards to looks and name, as it is the Night Sea version!! 😁)

(old style) NoNonsense with a broad italic nib worked well too.

The Sheaffer Fashion II with its very round, blobby B-nib on the other hand wrote too wet, causing smear issues on the Optik Paper (not so much on Clairefontaine tho).

 

 

 

I'm quite fond of Blackened Seas. Color, name, theme - all very much to my liking 🙃

[mizgeorge]

Excellent review - thank you! 

 

I like the look of this too, and just had to go and double check that it wasn't in the order that's on its way to me, which sadly it isn't

 

However, I believe they'll soon be available in the UK...

[jandrew]

Nice review --- I got this one a while ago. I rather like the color, but I find it far too smeary to be of any use. 

[yazeh]

Truly great review. To the point. 

Beautiful handwriting and lettering

Thankfully I have enough inks in that tone and shade and to be honest  I don't like inks that smudge....

 

 

 

[Licue]

49 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

However, I believe they'll soon be available in the UK...

This would be much better news (for me) without certain political developements in the past few years... 😑

[A Smug Dill]

I love your excellent review! Thank you so much.

[Licue]

36 minutes ago, jandrew said:

I find it far too smeary to be of any use. 

Less smear-prone would be better, that's true.

 

But I find in pens that don't lay on the ink thickly, it's not that much of a problem.

[LizEF]

Wow!  This is a fabulous review with great photography and layout!  Thank you!   I hope we see more reviews from you.  As to the ink - this is one of the five samples I got today so eventually, we'll see how it does in a Japanese EF nib.  The color is right up my alley.

[lapis]

Very nice -- well-written -- review. Thank you! Ahhh, a teal-black. The bottle looks a bit Waterman-ish, although not quite so angular. Can you still tip it, to fill it, say 45 degrees?

[Licue]

49 minutes ago, lapis said:

The bottle looks a bit Waterman-ish, although not quite so angular. Can you still tip it, to fill it, say 45 degrees?

That's probably not a good idea...

 

 

The tilted position (first pic) is dangerously unstable and can tip over quite easily.

The other two seem stable but unhelpful. 

Actually even the helpfullness of the tilted position is doubtful, as the bottle's mouth is rather small (see last pic next to a Pelikan 4001 30ml bottle).

 

Not a particularly good bottle shape for direct filling imo.

Doesn't bother me much tho, as I tend to prefer filling via syringe anyways.

[lapis]

Good comparison. I was doubtful, too. Even if it were more stable, I probably wouldn't buy it anyway. I don't tip over any bottles... no Watermans, no Pelikans and its me-toos, no new CdAs....

[PithyProlix]

Great review of (for me) a good color. Thanks!

[namrehsnoom]

Thank you for this wonderful review. Very informative, and gives a really good feel of the ink. I like the ink’s colour, the long dry times not so much. But I expect it will not be that much of a problem if you mainly use F/M nibs like I do. Hope to see more of your reviews!

[Geslina]

Looks very similar to Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-Yo

[bluemagister]

Thank you for the comparisons with water drops!  Now I can strike all those non-water resistant inks off my to-buy list!  

 

Saves me a lot of money, it does!  Still, it's a shame this ink isn't durable.  I like the color quite a bit!