Inkcidentally...

I blog about ink. And fanfiction. And I'm learning to draw. From zero. If you're more interested in just the writing sprints, you can get those on AO3 at isolated_inkcidents

[isolated-inkcidents]

Pillars of creation by Colorverse

The Text:

Vir Cotto looked down at the carnage around him as he came to his senses. People were staring. A lot of people were staring. The remains of his adventure were strewn around him, all wood and metal and fruits but somehow, the worst part was the awning. He hadn’t realised it was made of paper. Mind you, Vir hadn’t realised much of anyrhing as he barrelled down the corridors bent on… what? Revenge? Really? That was such a strong word for it. That can’t have been right. And yet, a fruit stand lay in shambles around him, the remains of its awning strewn over the smashed melons like sprinkles. The sign garnished the mess like a paper umbrella. The Drazi shopkeeper stared. Behind him, he could feel security watching too. Vir started to quiver, Londo’s sword suddenly becoming heavy in his hand as the reality of what he’d just done set in and he was gently led away from the scene. “Let me help him clean up. I’m not done here yet,” he mumbled.

The fandom: Babylon 5 The characters: Vir Cotto. Gen. The Prompt: https://www.tumblr.com/celestialwrites/744885314284322816/last-word-prompts-dialogue?source=share

The ink: Pillars of creation from Colorverse The colour: Purple? Sometimes? Also maybe black? Special properties: Sheening The pen: TWSBI Eco - Fine nib

My thoughts: This ink was really hard to pin down. It’s purple and black and and red, depending on when I was writing and on what paper. It has a sheen to it that I think is green? But I have a weird relationship to the colour green in general so maybe not?

Anyway writing with this… I found it goopy. Extremely goopy and liquid. It reminds me of some other very saturated inks where I have a very hard time controlling the flow, even in very fine-nibbed pens. I always get too much on the page. The benefit of this is that it writes super smooth, even at high speeds.

On my Tomoe River paper I had a little ghosting and the only place where there was bleed through was at the bottom where the ink smear is.

Good news? The ink didn't stain anything so that's nice!

So uh, that's about that. Thanks for reading.

[isolated-inkcidents]

Ginkaisyoku by kyo -no-oto

Carrie had not expected the request to be so reasonable. Honestly, she hadn’t expected there to be a request at all. Neither had she expected to find something— much less someone— when she enrolled in an elf-identification (the pamphlet was very clear on this point; this was not “elf-spotting”) course. This course was for the show, though, so she took it seriously. If an elf was asking her to follow him, she wanted to know. And now someone was in front of her, at the end of her first practice search, asking if Carrie would just follow him back to the house. There wasn’t a house. Carrie had tried to discreetly scan the forest behind the oddly-dressed individual, but saw nothing except more forest behind him. Her teacher had warned her to watch for shimmer at the corner of her eye and thorns hidden in an otherwise warm handshake. Neither suggestion was helpful.

The fandom: Oh No Ross and Carrie Podcaster RPF The characters: Carrie Poppy The Prompt: From Drop Kick Writer’s Block

The ink: Ginkaisyoku by kyo -no-oto The colour: Grayish blue with blue shimmer Special properties: Shimmer The pen: Kaweco sport, medium nib.

I've been using this ink a month. For a shimmer ink it is smooth-writing and I didn’t have any issues with clogging, which I seem to experience a lot with shimmer inks. However, when I started the writing sprint, I noticed a lot of starting and stopping. I figure as long as you write slowly, and fairly big, it’s a better experience. It plays nice with corner doodles, which is a plus, though I’m not much for drawing generally.

The colour is this washed out blue-gray that I just love. It builds up on itself as you write with it and can shade, but it took a little bit of work to get a lot of shading out of it. The shimmer is light blue and very subtle. It was hard for me to coax it out unless I had a light like my camera flash shining right at it. When you can see it, though, it really adds a little something to it. The overall effect was a lot like sitting out in the fog.

You can see from the picture that I had a lot of trouble with consistency of the line it lays down. Great for art projects, not so much for long writing sessions. It was really, really hard to write fast with this, though given the ink’s general fanciness, I’m not super surprised. I did have a lot of fun playing with it this month, though.

[isolated-inkcidents]

Ochiguriio by Kyo no Oto Merrill had always been careful with the spiders. She made sure the corners of the huse were warm enough and was never too aggressive with the broom. Eventually, they just stayed out of her way and enjoyed being left alone to eat the other pests that came by. And any lyrium dust they may have picked up crawling across the tables. It turns out spiders really like lyrium. So much so that Varric worried, briefly, that this was where all those enormous ones came from. He shuddered and unlocked the door to Merrill’s now-abandoned home in the alienage. He had nothing to worry about this time, though. In fact, his life was made easier by the fact that they glowed faintly blue in the corners, marking their presence and illuminating the darkness. That would mean it would be easier to catch one. Merril had told him once that the spiders in her house were clever and he learned later that it was the magic. A spider that had lived long enough in a mages hoe might know the secrets of the universe. Varric could not have cared less about the secrests of the the universe, but he did want to know where Daisy had gone. So, there he was, glass in hand, scrambling to get near enough to capture one of the spiders. In another time and place, it would have been funny.

The fandom: Dragon Age II The characters: Varric Tethras The Prompt: from Deepwater Prompts

The ink: Ochiguriio from Kyo no oto The colour: Warm brown Special properties: None The pen: Nagasawa Profit Skeleton Proske extra-fine nib

I love a brown ink and this one just looks cozy on the page. I got a feeling of diary writing in the middle of the night, lit by candle with the power out as I was writing with it. Or maybe it’s because it was winter and I’m always worried about the power in winter. I don’t know.

With this nib and ink combination I had a little trouble with starting and stopping but the pen is fairly new and it might be down to that. As I was getting to the end of the 15 minutes, and scrambling to write faster, I had a harder time keeping it writing consistently. I wonder if it would be a little bit wetter with a different pen.

Either way, the ink is dry-ish, as it goes down and doesn’t shade very much. It’s very uniform in colour as you write with this very fine nib. When I did the ink smear at the end, however, it felt a lot different. Like you could maybe coax out a lot of shading if you really wanted to. If I could draw, I could see myself doing a bunch of antique-style sketches in this ink, and only this ink.

[isolated-inkcidents]

Here's the thing. I have too much ink. So much ink. It's become a problem.

I got into fountain pens about two or three years ago, maybe four. It took me next to no time to fall in love with all the different kinds of inks available and now I have way too many and I need a reason to justify having them.

Because I am a better person when I blog, I'm going to blog about them. Because I am an even better person when I'm writing fanfiction, I'm going to make this an excuse to also do that.

The plan, once I get going, is going to be to take a prompt and do a writing sprint in an an ink colour. Whatever I get done, I'll post a picture and jot down my thoughts about writing with that ink continuously for... let's start with 15 minutes.

It'll be an adventure. Maybe just for me, but you're welcome to come along.