Diamine Ochre

Fall has definitely arrived! I missed out a bit on the back to school excitement - parents and kids and teachers all fresh and clean! Crisp air! School supplies! I think for all teachers, fall is one of the best times of year (it's kind of tied up with why we got into teaching in the first place). I think everyone has a little bit of nostalgia for the fall - it's your new start once a year, all through those formative childhood years.

I am normally not someone who matches ink colour to the colour of the pen. Actually, almost all of my pens are brownish/yellow or black...but I'm working on trying new things. I normally try to match inks based on the nib and the flow of the ink - shading inks in broader nibs, drier inks in wetter nibs. However, with the fall comes fall ink colours. How can you resist?

Diamine is one of my favourite ink lines, although I've noticed I haven't done a Diamine review yet! Their ordinary looking bottles are deceptive - and often new (and let's face it, more experienced...) fountain pen users gravitate to the more exciting Noodler's labels - because Diamine has some of the richest or most vibrant ink colours out there. I think Oxblood may be our best selling red ink, I have been told that Ancient Copper is "the" best ink ever made, the list goes on. Back when Salamander was released last year, and we found out we would only been getting three (3!) bottles due to limited supply from our distributor, we had some unimpressed customers (we have more Salamander in stock now...). One of my favourite Diamine inks is Ochre.

The paper is Rhodia 80gsm, and the pen is a "medium" Parker 51 - one of my first vintage pens, and one of my favourites.   The ink is a wet ink, flowing well as most Diamine inks do, even good for slightly drier pens or finer nibs. It is not waterproof, or even water resistant - definitely not for the addressing envelopes.

It's not a particularly fast drying ink, more on the long side, but not exceptionally so. Ochre will be good on most papers, although of course shading will show up best on higher quality paper. With lower quality copy paper or school notebooks, you may get a little feather or bleed-through, but for the most part, it's okay. This is a solid brown ink. It's brown without too much green or red, although it has a hint of orange. It's not a super dark brown-black, it's definitely a brown and has some good shading - even better in a broader nib.