I'm wondering how this ink looks in a wet and a dry XF pen. The scans I've seen here all seem to be of larger nibs. I'm contemplating trading a bottle of Zhivago (any interest?) for it, but before I place the ad I'd like to know what it would look like in the types of nibs I generally use. Thanks!

Zhivago tends to look quite a bit darker out of a fine nib that out of a medium for me. Almost black in a wet pen, while it's distinctly green from a medium.

El Lawrence is similar, a bit darker from a fine nib (although I've only tried it for a short time in a medium). Less of an effect, and it's got more of a brown or olive green color than Zhivago, too.

Be forewarned -- I've only got one pen so far that has not given me fits with it -- and that's a near new Parker 21 Super. Unless you write quite a bit every day with it, El Lawrence is VERY likely to gum up in an open nib. Probably the worst of all Nooder's inks. Lovely color though.

Peter

Ah, thanks a lot. If I do get it, it will probably stay in my super duper wet Lamy 2000, so hopefully that will be ok.

I've only tried El Lawrence in one pen so far - a fine-nibbed Waterman Carene which I wouldn't describe as being a particularly wet writer, but average. The colour I see on Rhodia paper and Red'n'black is similar to the scan in Handlebar's review but with more of a greenish tinge.

No flow issues for me. It's not a pen and ink I use every day and often sits for up to a week without being used but starts almost immediately. I do get some nib creep which I haven't seen with any other ink in this pen.

I have a bottle of El Lawrence that I use with a Lamy Al-Star with an Extra Fine nib. The color is outstanding. I recall someone on this board describing it as the color of "dirty motor oil." That's exactly the color it seems to me. However, with my extra fine nib, there are flow issues. It's kind of frustrating because I love the color so much. I've since started using Noodler's Bulletproof black which rarely lets me down.

Thanks a lot. I'm very excited about this ink.

Oh, that's interesting. Hopefully this will be the case for me, too.

This is a very cool ink and does have a dirty olive brown color to it, almost an evergreen brown. It has a nice look, yet does not scream off the page to say "look at me". In all the pens I have tried it with, a stub nib really makes it shine! I do get a little creep, but the color is worth it. I run it with a custom ground Esterbrook stub nib that is a wet writer and close to an BB nib.

Turn on a black light and look at the color then. The scene before the desert crossing in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" has a glint of the sun just before it passes the horizon...when gravity bends the light slightly to alter its color. This results in a brief moment of emerald green on the ocean....but in the dry desert it results in the color you see in that ink when one turns on the black light...continuously lining your line with that halo forever as it moves over the paper - lasting as long as the paper lasts as it is extremely durable ink as well. It will shade with that unusual tinge unlike any other ink ever made - because its components were not all available to industry until a few years ago. ;-)

Earlier production was later adjusted to increase flow in a greater variety of pens. When hesitant - it was vintage style and liked nibs set on deep fissure ebonite feeds and with tines parted enough for a ray of light to pass through them (such as the vintage Onoto and Swan pens Lawrence himself was photographed using multiple times)....and later it flowed in just about everything - yet exhibited greater "nib creep" as reported. Alas - an identical ink in terms of durability/properties/and counter-intuitive playing with the light spectrum is not to be found elsewhere.

Sorry about being pedantic, but atmospheric refraction (like a lens) is what causes such colorful effects. In fact, the amount of refraction on a typical day (it varies) is so extreme that by the time the bottom edge of the Sun visibly touches the horizon, in reality it has just completely set! That's right, while the Sun may be visible, it is actually below the horizon. Freaky, huh? This phenomenon has to be taken into account while making astronomical observations near the horizon, of course.

While gravitational lensing is a real phenomenon, it cannot practically be observed in this manner. I don't think that it would produce any color effects, either.



I have to say, I love your sources of inspiration! When I first saw Borealis Black and the reasoning behind it, I thought "Wouldn't it be neat to do the reverse and have the colors of the various emission spectra as individual inks?" Auroras actually consist of light from relatively few and extremely narrow portions of the visible spectrum emitted by atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere that get "excited" by collisions with energetic particles from the Sun. For example, one of the most prevalent of such emissions is that of atomic oxygen, at a wavelength of 5577 Å (a very specific shade of green). Interestingly, this light is also the primary component of a constant glow that is present even in the blackest of night skies out in the wilderness, known as airglow. It is essentially a faint, global, eternal aurora of which nearly everyone on the planet is completely unaware.

Another interesting emission is the "forbidden line" of doubly-ionized oxygen (O²⁺ or commonly OIII) at wavelength 5007 Å, which is the primary color of most types of nebulae. It's not "forbidden" because the Pope said so , but because it supposedly cannot happen but does anyway because of the nature of quantum physics. No lab equipment on Earth could ever generate a vacuum strong enough to allow this type of emission to occur, but it happens all the time in nebulae. In fact, many amateur astronomers use extremely sophisticated narrowband "OIII" filters to enhance their views of nebulae. Other common wavelengths of celestial light so emitted can be found in the red, violet, and other ranges of color.

All of this stuff is probably far too esoteric to ever find a market, but I mention it to further demonstrate to people that inspiration for colors can even come from unimaginable--nay, astronomical--distances, as well as the geekiest kind of scientific knowledge.