There’s always a bit of curiosity when I open a new day on an advent calendar. When I saw what was behind door number 3 of Inkvent, that curiosity was replaced by a different sort of curiosity; a “what in the world?” sort of curiosity.
Day 3’s ink is called Ash. It’s a standard grey ink, which explains my dumbfound reaction when I first saw it. I don’t have much experience with grey ink, and its certainly not a colour that I would seek out. In fact, I was wondering if I ever had used a grey ink before. As it turns out, I have. Day 3’s ink on the 2019 Diamine Inkvent Calendar was also a grey ink. Snow Storm was a lighter grey with blue-ish shimmer. The other element of my confusion was the name. I imagine that Diamine was trying evoke the last moments of a Yule log with the name “Ash,” but my images of ashes paint a less then hopeful holiday picture. Giving the creative team at Diamine a hard time aside, I was actually really interested in trying this ink out and ran it through my normal testing procedure.
Since I’ve already mentioned Snow Storm, I think I’ll continue talking about the colour for a bit. Ash is not simply Snow Storm without the glitter. It is a darker, less clean grey. Being a standard ink, I didn’t expect too much more than that, but I did note some blue in the darker areas of my swab, a bit of yellow-green when it was still wet and some pink after it dried. It shades nicely and is suitable for writing. It’s certainly not my favorite colour, but it’s really interesting and I have to give it full points for that.
Ash writes really well. I didn’t have any feeding issues on inconsistency while testing it and it had some feedback off the page. The feedback didn’t bother me, but it was on the upper end of what I prefer. Still, it was well-behaved, the lines I got were rich and full of colour and I enjoyed writing with it.
This ink isn’t overly saturated either. I didn’t get any bleed through on any paper I tested on, and when tested against water, my writing didn’t smudge at all. That said, it’s not water resistant. Ash washed out pretty quickly, and while I could read some of my writing afterwards, it wasn’t easy. However, the dry times on this ink are pretty short, which makes me very happy.
I’ve found that I good measure of what I think of an ink or pen is how long my review is. If I’m happy with something, my word count plummets. I suspect that’s because I equivocate less. And the word count for this review is about as low as it gets. I like this ink. I never think that I will like a grey ink, and Diamine is now two for two with them. It’s a good writing experience, interesting colour and I can’t complain about anything. I don’t think I’ll write my Christmas cards with it, but I can see myself pulling Ash out to draw once in a while. It’s not currently on my “To-buy” list, but I can easily see a future where it is. Overall, I’m very happy with Day 3 of Inkvent.
The Pen Lover's Nook 
I actually like this ink. For me it went down like a really organic green – moss or kelp – then dried to a dusky grey/green on Clairefontaine. I’m a bit weird though and like those ambiguous dirty greens – especially if they have good shading and other colours emerging. Thanks again for taking the time to record your observations.
LikeLiked by 1 person