Anatomy of an Ink Scan

A bit on my methods and madness:



1. This is the manufacturer and name of the ink. Unless otherwise noted, it's written using a Speedball C-1 italic nib in a dip pen.

2. This swatch is here to help rate the saturation of the ink. For more information you can go here: Ink Scan Info: Saturation

3. This section is designed to help you decide how see through an ink is. More information can be found here: Ink Review Info: Opacity

4. This bit is to rate how suitable this ink is for use with flexible pens. I've used a dip pen with an fine and flexible nib to give you an idea of the ink's performance. Sadly, I'm not that dip pen savvy yet, so how easy it is to fill a dip nib by immersing the end in the ink's bottle plays a huge part in how good this looks. I like to play around with Spensarian penmanship so hairlines and line width variation is what I'm going for here.

5. This section is to demonstrate an inks shading. 1x means I've dipped a Q-tip in the ink bottle and swabbed the paper twice. 2x means I've repeated that procedure again, and 3x means I've dipped the q-tip and then swabbed three times. If the ink looks really different in all three scans, it's got great shading. Sometimes, the ink simply appears darker when there are three layers of it. Sometimes the color actually changes, like Noodler's Apache Sunset which turns from orange to red. No noticeable difference? Then no matter how much ink you lay on the paper with your nib, the ink will look uniform. I find the Italic script in the first section is as good, or even a better way to rate this, but more information is a good thing!

6. These smear tests are performed by writing the time I waited between writing the line with an extra flexible fine dip pen and running a clean, dry -tip over that line. Inks that dry quickly are particularly useful if you tend to accidentally drag your hand over what you've just written, something of a bane for lefties I understand. This test is done on good, dense, uncoated paper suitable for fountain pens. A cheap paper can make a huge difference in drying times so YMMV.

Here are some notes on my scan procedure, materials, and definitions.

Ink Scan Info: My Scans, Papers, Nibs, et al