Ink is a lovely medium to draw with and there are many ways to use it. One of my favourites is to use a watersoluble ink to draw the basics of the sketch and then to add water to the drawing. The water dilutes the ink and pulls it away from the original lines on the paper. This creates differences in tone and sometimes also splits the component colours of the ink, resulting in magical and colourful effects. It can be quite hard to judge the degree to which an ink will split into colours when you look at standard swatches of the ink on a website, so I thought I'd test out a few of my own inks with water and share close-up scans of the results.
I tested out nine of the inks that I own and selected the ones that I thought would show the most colour splitting. As you can see from the photo below, all the inks but one are made by Diamine. This is my favourite brand as it's easy to buy in the UK and is more reasonably priced than most other inks. The one ink that isn't made by Diamine is created by Troublemaker, a handmade ink brand based in the Philippines.
My all-time favourite watersoluble ink is 'Earl Grey'. Its a grey ink that splits into an often subtle pink and blue. It's great to have in a fountain pen for sketches on the go and if you take a waterbrush along, you have all you need for some quick, atmospheric sketches.
The paper you draw on and the amount of water added to the ink all make a difference and so it's worth experimenting. The above sketch was drawn with a Twsbi Eco fountain pen containing 'Earl Grey' ink on paper in a Royal Talens Art Creation sketchbook. These are very cheap sketchbooks with 140gsm smooth drawing paper and are really good for quick, carefree sketches.
The leaf swatch drawings are all on Seawhite 300gsm watercolour paper with a cold-pressed finish and have been drawn with a glass dip pen. (This paper doesn't seem to be available now but there's a recycled version that is.) The dip pen tends to cut into the surface of the paper a little and so some of the original lines can stain with ink more than when using a fountain pen.
The bright blue colour that splits from the 'Earl Grey' ink is much more evident in the leaf drawing below than it was in the Mooragh Park sketch above. The fractal-like swirls of the ink on the watercolour paper are quite wonderful in the photo below.
The smaller 30ml bottles of Diamine ink are made of plastic, whereas the 80ml bottles are made of glass and are much more difficult to knock over.
Another quite muted colour is 'Celadon Cat'. This is a muted green ink that subtly splits into a grey and a bright blue-green on addition of water. There's something very restful about this colour and its variation in tones from a dark green to a pale bright green can be very useful when sketching.
An ink that I instantly fell in love with when I used it with water is 'Weeping Willow'. This was an ink from the 2023 Diamine advent calendar and seemed like a very boring colour at first, especially as many of the advent calendar inks are bright and sparkly. The impressive thing about this ink is revealed when it hits water, when its mid-brown hue suddenly divides into bright green and pinkish-brown. It's a fun colour to use when sketching natural subjects such as trees and country landscapes. Luckily, Diamine chose to release the ink in a larger bottle so it can be purchased individually.
Another ink from the 2023 Diamine advent calendar is 'Early Dusk'. This blue ink splits into a vivid turquoise blue and a muted purple-blue colour. It's a good colour for watery scenes and is very keen to split so you don't need to work too hard to get some dazzling effects. Again, this is available in a single bottle without buying the whole advent calendar.
'Masquerade' is another 2023 advent calendar ink and is the only shimmer ink to be tested here. It's a lovely deep red colour that splits into a slightly brighter red and a muted blue when water is added. This ink isn't as keen to split as some of the others and the results are much more subtle, but sometimes that's just what you want. There's a gold shimmer to this ink, but if you're careful not to shake the bottle up before you use it, this is minimal. All the same, make sure you don't put this ink into a fountain pen as the glitter will clog up the pen. I always use these inks with a dip pen.
I really struggled to get the blue component to split from the ink on the watercolour paper above, but had achieved more success when I drew a tree on Daler-Rowney Optima Mixed-Media paper back in 2023, when I first tried out the inks from the advent calendar.
Yet another 2023 advent calendar ink was 'Velvet Emerald'. This far from subtle colour is a bright green that turns even more vivid on addition of water as it splits into a bright blue and more acid green. The effect is stunning, although a little too bold for most of my sketches. Great if you fancy a change and for adding bold accents to a drawing.
Moving away from the advent calendar inks, we now have 'Salamander'. This is a wonderfully deep green-brown colour with only a small amount of colour change when water is added. in places, the water causes a yellow colour to emerge and this can give a subtle variation to sketches that is really lovely. The original lines of the sketch stay very dark and so it's a good colour to have handy in a fountain pen for drawing when out and about.
The swatch below shows the yellow colour splitting from the green around the edges of the swatch.
Back to the 2023 advent calendar inks now with 'Walnut', a rich brown ink that only splits a little in my tests. It's a useful brown when used without water, but when diluted the warm tones really emerge and it becomes much more interesting. There's a softness to the colours and a good depth to the tones that makes this a lovely ink to sketch with.
The final colour in my tests is the newest to me and something I bought just for it's interesting colour effects with water. 'Petrichor' by Troublemaker is a green ink when you first lay it down that turns purple as it dries and splits into a bright green and pinkish-purple when water is added. It's a bit bonkers and not, perhaps, the most suitable for general sketches but it's a lot of fun and perfect for evoking the feel of the aurora borealis or capturing the iridescence of insect wings.
I've really enjoyed playing with these inks again and this exercise has reminded me of some inks that I'd forgotten would be so good to sketch with. I think I'll clean a couple of my fountain pens and fill them with 'Walnut' and 'Salamander' inks so I can add them to my sketching set, along with the 'Earl Grey' that's a permanent fixture there. I don't want to add too many colours though as too much choice can delay or even prevent the drawing process from happening at all. Sometimes it's nice to just go out with one fountain pen, a sketchbook and a waterbrush and make do. Less pressure = more fun!