Wearingeul The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Ink Review #132
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.
Overview
The color/properties:
Wearingeul The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a soft earthy light green with a subtle yellow undertone. It shades distinctly with a crisp cut and hard edges around areas where the ink pools in both cursive and print — I especially like how it shades when letters overlap each other on different lines. The color is light, and I think that cream colored papers exacerbate that by blending with the slightly yellow tones. To be fair, I think this would have perfectly valid uses if you want your writing to look older or washed out (for example, scrapbooking purposes). With all that said, it doesn’t come through nearly as light on white paper, and a larger nib size would do the most in bringing out this ink’s best qualities.
Ink Splat
Ink Droplets
Performance on paper:
During my tests, there weren’t any traces of bleeding or feathering on any of the test pages. It should perform well on any fountain pen-friendly paper.
The dry times are slightly above average, taking 15-20 seconds with the largest nib sizes and between 5-10 with the finer ones. The dry times were especially low on Rhodia, where all but the 1.1 stub managed to dry within 10 seconds.
When exposed to water, there are faint blue shadows left behind of what was written — it’s not great, but there’s some degree of legibility.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has a dry-medium flow. It’s not all that thick, and in some pens, the dryness can certainly be an issue. The dryness also led to some mild hard starts with both the fine nib and the 1.1 stub. In the right pen, however, I’ve been surprised by how well the ink can perform — even when preparing my writing samples (below), the ink flowed well and wrote comfortably without hard starts, and didn’t have any issues keeping up with fast cursive writing.
Cleaning the ink out of the nib units was quick and easy; however, there were some thin rings of blue residue left over inside the barrel of the pen that didn’t seem to dissolve with water over time — they cleaned right out with a paper towel, but the pen required disassembly. It wasn’t a big deal, but something to consider if a pen’s filling system is hard to access for cleaning.
The fine rings or residue left over after cleaning.
Written on 68 gsm Tomoe River paper (white) with a medium nib.
Written on Midori MD paper (cream) with a fine nib.
Written on Midori MD paper (cream) with a medium nib.
Performance in a pen: 8/10
Performance on paper: 10/10
Color saturation: 4/10
Sheening: 0/10
Shading: 6.5/10
Dry time: 8/10
Water resistance: 1/10
Ease of cleaning: 7.5/10
Shimmer: None
My personal thoughts...
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was my first ever experience with Wearingeul inks, and that’s a great thing because it’s an excellent ink that made quite an impression on me. I was immediately taken by the literature-inspired inks available to choose from, and though I hadn’t yet read the book this ink is inspired by, the earthy light green stood out as something special while I flipped through the swatch book. I often like to look at Wearingeul’s marketing copy to get an idea of the reasoning behind the color they chose, but I honestly didn’t have to here. Moreover, I’ve since read the book, and I can’t imagine they could have done better. One look at the color, and it’s easy to see that it’s painting the right picture. It’s a rustic and downright anemoic ink-piction of the mid-19th-century Midwestern United States. They understood the assignment, and that makes this ink a winner in my book.
Written with two Conklin Mark Twain fountain pens (fine and medium nibs) on 68 gsm Tomoe River and Midori MD papers. Many thanks to Bertram’s Inkwell for allowing me to use the green Mark Twain for these photos.
Featured in the photography and writing samples:
Wearingeul The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Conklin Mark Twain, Vintage Green, medium nib
68 gsm A5 lined Tomoe River notebook by Odyssey Notebooks
Midori A6 lined notebook (Amazon)
Makers South Autumn Harvest A6 notebook cover
Tim Holtz Accordion Folio (Amazon)
Theory11 Provision playing cards (Amazon)
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 Midori MD A5 Notebook
A 52gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook