Waterman Harmonious Green
Ink Review # 57
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties:
Waterman Harmonious green is a deep green with mild blue undertones. It shades with a soft gradient where the ink pools, but it also has a high chance of shading with a dark line at both the edges of the letters and pooling areas. If the ink lays down heavy enough, this could become a mild red sheen around the edges of the letters instead. Certain nib and paper combinations could produce more sheen, but it’s not a sheening ink and your results may vary.
Ink Splat
Ink Droplets
Performance on paper:
Harmonious Green should perform well enough on most fountain pen-friendly papers. There was the usual bleed-through on the Kokuyo paper, but otherwise, there wasn’t any bleeding or feathering on the other test pages. The dry times were below average. With the larger nibs, the ink often dried between 20-25 seconds and the finer nibs often extended into the 10-second mark (and that even includes the needlepoint). The dry times were also noticeably worse on both Maruman and Midori paper. The water resistance was poor, but there was still some shadowing left behind after water exposure that may have some legibility.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Harmonious Green has a medium flow and generally performs well. I had hard starts on Midori with the broad nib, but otherwise, there were no other performance issues during my tests. The ink isn’t especially slick, and I wish it had more in the way of lubrication, but it’s still enough to be a mostly comfortable writing experience. The ink was able to be cleaned out of the pen in 2 sets of soaks and flushes without leaving any residue or traces of color inside the pen or nib units. For a more saturated ink, it performs well overall.
Performance in a pen: 8.5/10
Performance on paper: 8.5/10
Color saturation: 7/10
Sheening: 3/10
Shading: 4/10
Dry time: 6/10
Water resistance: 2/10
Ease of cleaning: 6.5/10
Shimmer: None
My personal thoughts…
Harmonious Green is my second favorite of Waterman’s line of inks. It’s the classic blue-green-with-red-sheen that I always seem to come back to. It’s not perfect by any means — as I mentioned earlier, I wish it could be slicker, but it works well and it looks nice. I like the slight red sheen, too. It’s just enough to give the ink some flavor, but not too much to make it, well, a sheening ink. Unfortunately, what makes the color great is also its biggest flaw: it’s not all that unique. There are tons of blue-green-with-red-sheens out there now, and if you already have one of them, it wouldn’t astonish me if you decided to skip Harmonious Green. Nonetheless, it gets a high recommendation from me.
Written on 52 gsm Tomoe River Paper with a Waterman Ink-Vue (semi-flex fine)
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