This is the Diamine Inkvent 2024 Day 14 door:
Day 14’s ink is Diamine Mint Twist. It’s a dark Eau de Nil or light viridian green coloured ink with some shading and chameleon shimmer that goes from green to blue. I used a Pilot Metropolitan with a CM (Calligraphy Medium) nib. This nib is weird one – it lays down a wide line but somehow it’s also a dry nib.
The chameleon effect on Diamine Mint Twist is less impressive than on other chameleon inks. The base colour itself is a nice artificial pastel-y green.
Here’s a close up of the chameleon effect. I think an additional colour here – a pink for example – would have punched it up a bit.
Here’s a writing sample on original Tomoe River Paper. You can see the shading, which is there but isn’t very pronounced, and some of the chameleon effect.
Every Diamine Inkvent has to have its share of green inks, and this year’s calendar isn’t an exception. Diamine Mint Twist isn’t the first or even the second shade of green you’d think of when “Christmas” comes to mind, but it is a nice, calming shade of green with the addition of some shading and a bit of chameleon effect to add interest to it. It really reminds me of the green that Fortnum and Mason uses, and as I love F&M that’s a bonus for me.
I had trouble sketching today’s teddy bear. The first sketch came out wonky because I was distracted while sketching out the initial proportions, so I made a second sketch further down on the page. That’s when I discovered that I had managed to write the pen dry (I purposely don’t fill the Inkvent testing pens full). That meant that when it was time to write the name of the ink used for the sketch I was writing on ink fumes.
Today’s teddy bear is a German Hermann teddy bear, numbered but not named. I bought him in York, mostly for his unusual eyes.
Diamine Mint Twist isn’t the most festive of green inks not the most dazzling ink in Diamine’s lineup (or indeed in this year’s Inkvent calendar). It is somehow in the “also ran” category of Inkvent inks for me, likely because it isn’t very practical due to the chameleon shimmer, yet it also doesn’t have much of the wow effect that the chameleon shimmer usually adds. I’ll be skipping a full bottle of this one, though I have some fondness to the base Eau de Nil colour.
Would you have changed Diamine Mint Twist’s chameleon effect? Do you see yourself using it?