Wearingeul Lost (Demian)

[namrehsnoom]

Wearingeul – Lost (Demian)

 

I’m sure I have more than enough inks already, but sometimes an opportunity rises to explore a new brand that wasn’t on my radar before. Some time ago Scrittura Elegante – a stationery shop from the Netherlands – announced that they would stop their business. Definitely a sad thing: this lovely little webshop carried some interesting and lesser-known brands, with Wearingeul being one of them. They started a sale to empty the warehouse, and I took this opportunity to place a last order, loading up on couple of Wearingeul inks.

 

Wearingeul is a stationery brand from South Korea, that gets its inspiration from arts & literature. In their own words: “We re-interpret novels and poetry with colors. You can find characteristic inks with stories and also notes/papers which are suitable for ink users.”

 

 

 

Lost is inspired by Hermann Hesse’s book “Demian” (1919). Between the years 1916 and 1917, Hesse went through a personal crisis as a result of illness and death in the family. His personal distress led him to seek psycho-analysis with both Carl Yung and his student J.B. Lang. The novel Demian is based on his process of self-discovery through psycho-analysis. The psychological changes and conflicts that the main character experiences in the process of “finding himself” are expressed as the ink dries and the colour changes.

 

This is the second Wearingeul ink I tried, and again I was completely knocked off my socks by the ink’s colour. What a beauty! The colour is a pale sea-blue with a muted and toned-down feel to it, that looks absolutely georgeous on pure white paper. When heavily saturated a mysterious yellow undertone comes to the surface, adding some extra eye-candy. Totally fits my taste! But Lost is also a difficult and stubborn ink, that will not always play along with your pens and paper. The ink is too pale for fine nibs and/or dry pens and is not too friendly for lower quality paper. But when the circumstances are just right, the ink delivers beautifully and is an aesthetic marvel. 

 

 

 

Wearingeul Lost writes very light but is still quite readable. On white paper, the result is soft and restful – a pleasure for the eye. But the ink definitely has its sweet spot: a wet pen, white and good-quality paper, and preferably a wider nib (M or above). The ink doesn’t look good on creamy paper – the yellow tones of such paper don’t combine well with the pale blue colour, and the result is a more or less sickly-looking blue – not pleasant at all. The ink also writes with fairly low lubrication in dry pens (like the Safari) and is therefore best paired with wet writers. 

 

To illustrate the colour span of this Wearingeul ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Lost (Demian) shows a very wide saturation range, from a wispy light-blue up to a moderately saturated sea-blue with yellow undertones coming to the surface. Due to this wide contrast range, the ink is a  fairly strong shader. Dry pens favour the left side of the saturation range, where the ink is too pale to be useful. Wetter pens explore the right side where the ink looks superb and shows great aesthetics.

 

 

On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved perfectly. There is no visible smearing at all. Water resistance is also remarkably good. The colour fades away, but a pale grey-blue ghost of your writing remains that is still readable without too much trouble. The chroma also clearly shows the yellow undertones hiding within the ink’s composition. Nice!

 

 

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 an F-nibbed Wancher Dream Pen
• Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier with 1.1 nib 
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari)

Lost writes scratchy in my Safari pens with bad lubrication. It really needs wet writers. Due to the ink’s paleness, it works best with wet pens and/or broader nibs. This Wearingeul ink also tolerates only the higher quality papers – otherwise you will get visible feathering, combined with see-through and bleed-through. And it’s best not to use it on cream-coloured paper: the result is guaranteed to disappoint - a sickly-looking pale blue. On pure white paper on the other hand, this Wearingeul ink truly is a feast for your eyes. Like I hinted at before: a quirky ink that you need to get acquainted with, and that only shines in its goldilocks zone.

 

 

I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. In scans, the contrast gets blown up, and looks totally unrealistic – see the scan below. My scanner really messed this one up! 

 

 

Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. Unfortunately for me, Lost doesn’t seem to like my Paperblanks journal, exhibiting quite some visible feathering. Damn!

 

 

 

Writing with different nib sizes

The photo below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). The initial lines were written with Lamy Safaris. Wearingeul Lost is not an ink for these dry Safari pens – only the B-nib was more or less ok. But the ink really shines with the wet-writing Wancher Dream Pen and the Edison Collier stub. It takes some time and effort to find the perfect pairing, but it’s definitely worth it: the end result looks wonderful – a soft, pastel-toned, pale sea-blue that is a feast for the eye.

 

 

Related inks

To compare this Wearingeul Lost 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.  Lost stands on its own in my ink collection. A close cousin is kyo-no-oto hisoku, which is also soft & pale, but more green-leaning.

 

 

Inkxperiment – The Fall of Trantor

As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. I really enjoy the couple of hours I spend on these monochrome mini-paintings – experimenting with the ink to see all the shades that can be extracted from it.

 

This is number two in my “geometry 101” series, this time with the focus on triangles. Inspiration for the drawing comes from the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov – now also an Apple TV+ series that I’m binge-watching. On the right side sits Hari Seldon’s Vault on the planet Terminus. Top-left is a representation of the Prime Radiant, a multi-dimensional data storage device containing all of Hari Seldon's psychohistorical calculations on the fall of the Galactic Empire. This fall is symbolized by the collapse of Trantor’s Star Bridge, a space elevator linking the surface to a boarding station in geo-stationary orbit around the planet.

 

 

 

I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I drew in the background with cotton swabs dipped in heavily water-diluted ink. I then painted in the triangles representing the different elements of the “Fall of Trantor” story, using self-made stamps. I finally added some accents with a fountain pen and pure ink.  The resulting picture shows what can be achieved with this Wearingeul ink in a more artistic context.

 

 

 

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 started by using a “warm” photo filter, and then used an “antique paper” filter to get a more grey-looking colour. For my “Geometry 101” series I want to use square formats. So I squeezed the end result to a square shape – and since I only used triangles in the drawing, the distortion resulting from the squeeze forms no problem at all … squeezed triangles remain triangles. 

 

 

 

Conclusion

Wearingeul Lost is a stunning ink – a soft pale-blue that simply looks wonderful on good-quality white paper. But it’s also a difficult ink with a narrow goldilocks zone: you need exactly the right combination of pen, nib and paper to extract that beautiful pale sea-blue in all its glory. It makes you totally forget the dark side of this ink – bad lubrication, sick-looking on yellow paper… All is forgiven once you hit that exact goldilocks spot. I personally love this ink, but can absolutely imagine that it’s not for everyone.

 

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

 

 

Backside of writing samples on different paper types

 

 

[LizEF]

  On 2/24/2024 at 8:40 PM, namrehsnoom said:

But the ink definitely has its sweet spot: a wet pen, white and good-quality paper, and preferably a wider nib (M or above).

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Challenge accepted!  (I have added it to my list of inks to get samples of and review - sometime around mid-2025. )

 

  On 2/24/2024 at 8:40 PM, namrehsnoom said:

Lost writes scratchy in my Safari pens with bad lubrication.

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Oh goody!  Something to look forward to!

 

Thanks, @namrehsnoom, for another very thorough review, a challenge, and a solution to the sure problem (of this ink in a Japanese EF ).  Love the artwork, as always, and this time, I really enjoyed the in-process pictures as well.

[yazeh]

@namrehsnoom thank you for another superb, detailed and gorgeous ink exploration. I especially enjoy your artistry in your ink Inkxperiment in both formats. Looking forward to more quality explorations this years

[lapis]

Excellent study and examination as usual. My "type" of ink colour, too! This is what I'd call polytone (as against monotone), but also musically-inclined. And/or, at least very poetic.

[inkstainedruth]

@namrehsnoomInteresting looking color, although seems a bit pale/illegible in a lot of the writing samples.  But thanks as usual for the comprehensive review.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[mizgeorge]

Fabulous! This was (I think) the first Wearingeul ink I got, and I'm well into my second bottle now. Resurrection and Moby Dick are both getting a lot of use at the moment as well. 

 

Thank you as always for a fantastic technical review, and for some wonderful artwork. I really enjoyed this one!

[InesF]

Thank you, @namrehsnoom, for this comprehensive ink review. I always appreciate the effort you put into the written parts but also into your drawings! 

 

This ink looks great and would be in my newly developed preferred zone of somehow muted ink colours with surprising complexity behind, only seen at a second look. For me it was the Wearingeul Mad Hatter which I only recently fell for.

 

Always looking forward to your next posting!

[Baggins]

You have a “blue fox” somewhere. I think this color on white TRS 52gsm, B nib. Next Rhodia/Clairefontaine. Lost, got it.

Z.

P.S. Moleskin is real 💩🚽paper on FPs. Learning about new papers, thanks.

[kazoolaw]

Comprehensive review:  well done.

And the answer to the inky question is “Yes.”