Diamine Inkvent 2023: Day 1 — Fortunes Gold
Inkvent is here!
The long-awaited first day of Inkvent has finally arrived! We’re jumping right in with day one: Fortunes Gold.
The color/properties:
The base color is a slightly green-tinted yellow. This is one of Diamine’s “chameleon” inks: the color changes depending on the angle of the lighting in which you’re viewing the page. I did notice some minor changes in color between blue and green, but honestly, the effect was difficult to see with this ink. It takes quite the awkward angle to notice it at all, and unless you’re in some incredibly inconvenient lighting, it’s hard to see anything outside of a standard golden shimmer. This, along with poor shimmer distribution, made the effect especially difficult to capture on camera and made this color unremarkable overall.
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
How did it perform?
I ran into a few clogs while testing this ink in the fine nib, which wasn’t surprising because, in my experience, this ink was tremendously dry. I had difficulties swatching it, and the concentration of particulates while writing with the fine nib had me concerned. Thankfully, I didn’t run into any issues while testing the ink with the other nibs, but I have to say, it wasn’t a very enjoyable writing experience. The ink didn’t feel adequately lubricated to me and I really began to notice that while testing with the broad nib. Even worse, the shimmer distribution really suffered because of it.
Otherwise, this ink seemed well-behaved on either paper. I did notice that the particulates easily rubbed off the paper and made a mess. This is a common experience with just about any shimmering ink, but I’ll say that it was especially bad here. On the plus side, when cleaning the ink out, I didn’t notice any particulates remaining stuck to the piston or the inner walls of the barrel. For a shimmering ink, it’s relatively easy to clean.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
My personal thoughts…
I’m sad to say that I was a little disappointed with Fortunes Gold. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way the ink performed — I can get past that if I actually like the color itself, and underwhelming chameleon effect aside, I don’t. I not only find the base color to be mildly unpleasant, but I don’t think it’s all that festive or wintry either. I just don’t think it’s a great Inkvent ink, and I don’t see myself purchasing a personal bottle in the future except perhaps for review purposes.
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook
More Images/Info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 3 nib units including a Fine, Medium, and Broad. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
Scan of the writing sample