Diamine Pumpkin
Ink Review #13
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties:
Diamine Pumpkin is a vibrant orange. It’s a mostly solid color that doesn’t offer a lot of shading or color variation. Any shading you do experience will be minimal, and any lighter tones that may be present are so often going to be overpowered by the saturated, searing orange that you’ll rarely see them.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
More Writing Samples:
Performance on paper:
Diamine Pumpkin was very well-behaved on paper: there was no feathering and no bleeding on any of the test pages. Dry times were average and uniform, with few discrepancies across the different test papers. There was some water resistance, but it unfortunately left a cloudy and smudgy mess that isn’t easily legible.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Pumpkin was also well-behaved in the pen. The ink had a medium flow that provided ample lubrication that felt consistent in all of the test nibs. I didn’t experience any hard starts, skips, or stops during the tests. I do want to note that this ink does have a tendency to crust up quickly and there may be a high chance for nib creep. This is a highly saturated orange and I expected difficulties cleaning, but thankfully, cleaning was much easier than expected. The water ran clear with a standard flush and didn’t leave any residue in the barrel or on the piston.
Value/cost per ml:
At the time of writing Diamine Pumpkin sells for $17 for an 80ml bottle from most US retailers, making this ink $0.21 per ml.
The bottle/packaging:
Diamine Pumpkin comes in the standard Diamine bottle with a gold cap and an orange label that generally represents the color inside. The glass could be crisper, but the bottle is inoffensive and unassuming, if not slightly akin to artistic supplies. I think it does well to capture Diamine as the long-standing and historic ink maker they are. Functionally, the bottle is fine. It’s wide at the bottom, making it stable for filling. The opening isn’t the widest though and I do find it more comfortable to syringe-fill the pen rather than from the bottle.
Score: 63.5/70
Price per ml: 8.5/10
Performance in a pen: 9.5/10
Performance on paper: 10/10
Color saturation: 8/10
Sheening: 0/10
Shading: 3/10
Dry time: 7.5/10
Water resistance: 4/10
Ease of cleaning: 8/10
Bottle form: 2/5
Bottle function: 3/5
*Only 70 of the 100 available points are required for an outstanding score.My personal thoughts...
I hate to say it, but I just don’t really care for this one. There’s nothing exactly wrong with the color or the performance, but It’s just so underwhelming. Maybe it was unfair of me to expect a deluge of the inky essences of autumn pumpkin perfection. It does look remotely pumpkin colored at a glance, but then the color almost feels too saturated to truly resemble one. Honestly, it could just be any orange, so for a moment let’s imagine that it wasn’t even named Pumpkin. Does it get any better? Not really, I’m still underwhelmed.
I wanted pumpkins, but all I got was disappointment.
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook with a Nahvalur/Narwhal Original Plus Pumpkin Marmalade <F>
More images/info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook
Color comparisons:
Other pumpkin-themed colors:
