Diamine - Shimmering Seas

Shimmering Seas is one of Diamine's Shimmertastic inks. I think it's the first shimmer ink I ever bought and I still love it. The blue is dark but not very complex. When the ink is very saturated it sometimes shows dark brown edges. The shimmer is gold.

Here is the entire page with all the tests. The writing samples are done on Rhodia white, Iroful and white Tomoe River (52gr). I used a Kaweco Sport with a B-nib for the writing.

The chromatography of this ink is not very spectacular. The gold shimmer stays at the bottom (all shimmers do).

The middle part is a moody grey blue with a hint of violet and at the top a brighter blue leaning towards ultramarine.

The sketch I did was of a Grey Seal on the beach of Schiermonnikoog. You probably have never heard of this place. It is an island not far from where I live. It's the most northern part of the Netherlands. When I was little we used to spend our holidays there. And I still love to go there. It's small but peaceful and it has an abundance of nature. The island is a National Park and well loved by plant and bird lovers.

Anyway, I could talk for hours about Schier but I won't. Just showing the seal on the beach at low tide. The thing with shimmer inks is that the shimmer in the ink drops quickly to the bottom of the bottle or pen. So you might see some shimmer if you work quickly but if you work slowly (like me) most of the shimmer won't show. That's ok. The colour of this ink is still very nice. And before applying the darkest parts, I did a good shake with the bottle. So the belly of the seal still got some gold in the end.

I really love this ink. It's very pretty in writing. For sketching it's nice, especially when you can create big puddles of the dark ink to show off the golden shimmer and perhaps even some of that warm dark brown.