Robert Oster Muddy Swamp

[namrehsnoom]

Robert Oster Muddy Swamp

 

Robert Oster is an Australian ink maker that is well-known for its unique range of colours. On his website he describes our shared love quite eloquently: “Robert Oster Signature originates from one of the most famous wine producing regions of the world, the Coonawarra district of South Australia, an idyllic setting with great influence on the senses. There is my inspiration. It’s a joy to share it with you.” Well, we are certainly fortunate to have inspiring ink makers like Robert Oster to satiate our thirst for glorious inks.

 

It’s been a while since I reviewed a Robert Oster ink, but recently I got me a bottle of Muddy Swamp, that really impressed me. This ink’s colour is totally intriguing… a murky mix of teal, blue-black, grey and green. Difficult to describe, wonderful to experience! To me, the closest I can come is to classify it as a dark teal-grey. 

The ink’s name is well chosen: it definitely breathes that muddy feel of dark swamp water, with bubbling eddies of weeds swirling around, frogs croaking, dragonflies zipping around… An ink that creates a pensive mood, ideal for an intimate journaling session in the evening. A nicely saturated ink, that is at home in all nib sizes. Also an ink with strong shading, but somewhat subdued and not at all harsh on the eye. This Muddy Swamp is right up my alley – one of the best inks I tried this year!

The fairly heavy shading caused some problems with my scanner, which tends to exaggerate the contrast of written text. As such, I mostly present photos of the ink that more accurately show its real looks.

 

To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. This Muddy Swamp has a fairly broad dynamic range, ranging from a light grey-blue to a much darker teal-grey. This translates to prominent shading, but without a harsh contrast between the light & darker parts. Aesthetically very pleasing, and I like it a lot!

 

On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – Muddy Swamp behaved really well, with only minimal smearing. Water resistance is also fairly good: a lot of the colour dissipates, but what’s left on the page is still legible without too much trouble. Even after 15 minutes of soaking, there’s still readable text left on the page. Not bad at all. The ink’s chromatography shows a complex mix of dyes: I see green and blue, grey of course but also some hints of purple. The bottom part of the chroma shows that the grey dyes are firmly attached to the paper, which explains the waterresistant properties of the ink.

 

I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band 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 an M-nib Lamy Safari fountain pen
• The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Lamy Safari
• A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari
• Origin of the quote, written with an Edison Collier with 1.1 stub
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari)

Muddy Swamp behaved perfectly on most paper types, with only a hint of feathering on the lower quality papers (like Moleskine), where you also get show-through and bleed-through, but not the worst I have seen. Drying times are mostly around the 10 second mark with the Lamy Safari. This ink is definitely made for pure white paper, where it truly shines. I personally find it a bit underwhelming on cream paper – still good looking, but the yellow tinge shines through and significantly breaks down the ink’s inherent beauty. My advice: avoid strong cream-coloured paper.

 

I’ve also added a scanned image of some writing samples, just to give another view on the ink. The scanner captures the colour fairly well, but greatly exaggerates the contrast. That’s why I used photos to present the writing samples on different paper types.

 

Writing with different nib sizes
The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Muddy Swamp writes a well-saturated line in all nib sizes, showing good contrast with the paper. The EF-nib already presents hints of shading, with shading picking up with F-nibs and above. The ink looks at its best with more dry-writing pens or broader nibs. With wet writers, the ink’s shading drowns away and becomes less prominent. But no matter the pen/nib combination, Muddy Swamp delivers, and gives you a stunningly beautiful result.

 

Related inks
To compare Muddy Swamp 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. This Robert Oster creation is different from other blue-green grey-toned inks in my collection. As such, it was a wonderful discovery. I just love grey-leaning inks with a bit of colour to them, and this teal-grey is really superb!

 

Inkxperiment – Cityscape

As part of my ink reviews, I try to create an interesting drawing that showcases the ink in a more artistic setting. I love doing this part: a real challenge at times, and a great way to improve my drawing skills. And besides, it’s just fun to use inks for more than just writing. Inspiration for this drawing comes from the original Blade Runner movie that I recently revisited. I especially love the scene at the end of the movie with Rutger Hauer sitting in the rain, uttering the unforgettable words: “… All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain…” Still gives me goosebumps. Rober Oster Muddy Swamp seemed like an ideal ink to depict a gloomy dystopian cityscape.

 

For this inkxperiment I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper, onto which I painted a background by applying heavily water-diluted ink through a piece of kitchen towel. I then used a piece of textured carpet anti-slip material to draw the city buildings, starting with strongly diluted ink in the background and building up with more pure ink for the city blocks in the foreground. A fairly simple drawing, but the result is quite good and shows what can be achieved with Muddy Swamp in an artistic setting. 

 

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.

For this computational derivation, I made a square cut-out of the inkxperiment drawing, and applied a negative colour filter to it. Nothing more, nothing less. The result shows the city at night and looks amazingly well. I’m really pleased with it.

 

Conclusion
Robert Oster Muddy Swamp has a very unusual dirty-looking teal-grey colour, that is simply amazing. A gorgeous looking ink that works equally well for writing as for drawing. I enjoyed this ink immensely and can definitely recommend it. I you like teal or grey-leaning inks, this is a must-have in my book.

Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib

 

Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

 

 

[dragondazd]

Putting this on my list!

 

Do you recommend any other muddy osters?

[I-am-not-really-here]

Looks like slate grey to my eyes, a better outcome than the ink name implies.  Thank you for the review!

[InesF]

Thank you @namrehsnoomfor introducing this ink and for the effort you put into the review.

 

All of the Robert Oster muddy series inks look interesting and Muddy Swamp seems to have the qualities of a daily use ink. I will add it to my shopping list.

[LizEF]

2 hours ago, namrehsnoom said:

dark swamp water, with bubbling eddies of weeds swirling around, frogs croaking, dragonflies zipping around…

  Wow, great word-picture, @namrehsnoom!

 

2 hours ago, namrehsnoom said:

 

Yum!  The ink looks gorgeous here!  It's perfect in that stub.   After looking at it in the other nibs, I declare this a stub-nib-ink.   I'll bet it would look gorgeous in my 0.6mm Nemosine...  Hmm.  This ink will have to go on the list.

 

2 hours ago, namrehsnoom said:

Rober Oster Muddy Swamp seemed like an ideal ink to depict a gloomy dystopian cityscape.

Love that you're using "Muddy Swamp" to paint a cityscape - as opposed to, you know, a swamp swamp.  You let that square of carpet-no-slip material rise to a higher purpose!  I love how you find these ordinary materials and put them to use in creating art.  And while I often like the computational art better, in this case, I prefer the original.

 

Thanks for this review - great and thorough as always, and this time an ink that really appeals to me.

[mizgeorge]

Thank you @namrehsnoom - this has brought me a little moment of real happiness. And an ink in a basket. 

 

A perfect review, and I utterly love the inkxperiment. Just what was needed on a very gloomy (and very dark) day. 

[yazeh]

Amazing review

Love the inkxperiment. And what an ink, you got me tempted

 

[namrehsnoom]

21 hours ago, dragondazd said:

Putting this on my list!

Do you recommend any other muddy osters?

Mountain of Ink's blog has a good overview of the other inks in the Mudpack Set, see Robert Oster Mudpack Set — Mountain of Ink. I only got the Muddy Swamp, because that's the ink that appealed most to me.

[namrehsnoom]

Thank you all for the nice comments. For some reason, I totally overlooked Papier Plume Bayou Nightfall, which is almost an exact lookalike for the Muddy Swamp. See below for the comparison:

 

 

I feel an ink shoot-out coming up ... (probably during the year-end holidays).

[LizEF]

8 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

I feel an ink shoot-out coming up ...

👏

[fireant]

Thank you for another incredible review.