Green Is For Grading

[elippman]

I like the look of Mont Blanc Irish Green. I also like all the olive-inclined inks in general. With the olive inks, I worry about a tendency on bad paper to be too dark and trend toward brown. Irish Green is striking, but in some scans it looks pretty dark.

[MrsHobie]

I would probably use something like Iroshizuku Chiku Rin, but it's so cheerful you might get thanks for Cs.

I like this ink, quite bright Iroshizuku inks behave wonderfully on every kind of paper

[TSherbs]

Mont Blanc Irish Green is very well behaved, even on cheap paper.

I like this too.

[JakobS]

Diamine Umber is one of my favorite greens as a lefty, I can’t say I ever notice it smearing when I write with it in a medium wet pen. It’s a very subtle and unusual green which allows it to stand out more than you would think. It will hold up fine with standard copy paper from someplace like Office Dept/ Office Max, struggles a little bit more on 30%-100% recycled copy paper. Worth a sample at least.

 

I also love Safari, I would think it would stand out, and not too in your face to want to read the comments, or notes you leave your students.

[elippman]

Yes, Safari is a nice ink. I just got my bottle of it, remembering a positive experience with a sample a couple years ago, but I haven't inked a pen with it yet. Will probably do so tomorrow.

 

Diamine Umber is a nice-looking ink. I hadn't run across that one before, but it's quite nice.

 

That Callifolio Olivastre is awfully impressive in reviews. The reviewer on Vanness gave it 12 stars. I'm such a sucker for that kind of color.

[Runnin_Ute]

I have a bottle of KWZI Pine Green on its way, but won't have it until probably the end of next week. Along with it I have a bottle of El Dorado and Brown #4

 

This is a link to the swabs. I didn't see it on the KWZI site.

 

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/kwz-standard-fountain-pen-ink

 

They ordered them alphabetically.

[inkstainedruth]

I have Monteverde Olivine, and while I like the color I'm getting some nib creep and crud build-up on the nib.

If you can deal with iron gall inks, you might want to have a look at Platinum Classic Forest Black, or some of the KWZI IG greens (I have IG Green #3), both of which are well behaved on poor quality paper. [For an non-IG green KWZI Green-Gold #2 is also nice.]

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[elippman]

There are so many of those KWZ inks that I have trouble keeping up with all the numbers. I guess I'm a sucker for names. Too much time in the former USSR spoiled me on the qualitative value of numbering things. At least "Pine Green" tells me something.

 

As to Monteverde Olivine, I'm avoiding it at this point because someone wrote that it doesn't dry quickly and smears easily. As a lefty who's not an underwriter, I can't go that direction. The Callifolio version is still holding my interest, though.

[senzen]

Vert Empire is a very nice, dusky medium green; it can come out way darker if the pens evaporates though.

 

[elippman]

Thanks for the writing sample! Yes, as odd as it is given my expressed desires, when I started this quest I quickly ended up with Vert Empire on one of my wishlists. I suppose that also testifies to my prejudices, as no one argues that it "pops" off the page. Still, I'm drawn to that type of color. It is oddly appealing to me that it has been described as a green with grey undertones.

[ErrantSmudge]

Since the purpose of the ink is for grading papers, you should ask yourself how important it is that the color suit your personal taste as well as the practical requirements of grading (legible, stands out on the page, tasteful to a broad range of students).

[elippman]

And that’s why I then took Vert Empire off my wishlist—it didn’t seem good for standing out on a page. It is quite a paradox. Grading is what got me into fountain pens. Nobody likes doing it, but I found it easier to motivate myself to grade if I knew I’d get to use my pens to do it. So as much as the students’ preference and readability matters, part of the goal is also to act as an extrinsic motivator for me (which means I need to like the ink enough to want to see it). It’s a balancing act to say the least. Even though I’ve expanded my writing with fountain pens quite a bit, I’d still say that I do about 50% of it while grading.

[Noihvo]

 

Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Noihvo

[elippman]

Wow! Supremely helpful! It looks like KWZI #5 and Lierre Sauvage are right about what I'm envisioning as ideal for my grading purposes. Are they virtually interchangeable?

Edited March 22, 2018 by elippman

[empliau]

I use Yama-budo in a fine pen for grading, which definitely leaps off the page, but not in a green way. Have you looked into Syo-ro? It's teal-ish but dries a beautiful green. It's my current favorite.

[elippman]

I did look at Syo-ro a while back when I was trying to find interesting turquoise/teal colors. I didn’t end up buying it, but did end up with Yama Dori, Verdigris (too dark for grading, but a great color), Noodler’s Blue Steel, and Robert Oster’s Fire and Ice. So I’m pretty well stocked on that front.

 

Re: Yama-budo, I know it’s a favorite of many. I’ve never been able to get my eye around it, though. I can’t tell if it’s pink or purple. I’ve never seen it on paper (off screen), but it looks to me similar to Noodler’s Ottoman Rose (?), which I sometimes use for grading when teaching a class on the Ottoman Empire (yes, I use the other one, too). I’ve also thought that Yama-budo resembles a much more intense, saturated version of Kaweco Summer Rain. Am I wrong?

[displacermoose]

Yama-budo is magenta, so it's half way between pink and purple. From the pictures I've seen (never tried it myself, although it's on my list) Kaweco Summer Purple is very much in the dusty purple category, in the same family as Poissure de Lune. Yama-budo is most emphatically not grey and way redder. It's like a less intense version of Noodler's Saguaro (sp?) wine, or in some circumstances, R&K Solferino. How it manages to be in that family and not be eye-searing is a complete mystery to me, but it does. It should be an obnoxious burn-your-retinas kind of ink (which I detest; give me dark and a bit murky any day), but it is lovely. You should try a sample. Pictures don't capture it.

[max dog]

I like Montblanc Irish Green because it's the same color as the moss that grow on the trees where I live. Very natural looking green, plus it's well behaved and flows nice.

[Noihvo]

Wow! Supremely helpful! It looks like KWZI #5 and Lierre Sauvage are right about what I'm envisioning as ideal for my grading purposes. Are they virtually interchangeable?

 

[elippman]

I think I tend to prefer the warmer approach as well, and I have enough that tends in the blue direction. One other ink that has been recommended over and over on this thread, and seems to sit in the same vicinity of these two, is Montblanc Irish Green. It's a bit more expensive, so I'm trying to figure everything out first, but I've also read elsewhere comments like, "Lierre Sauvage was my go-to green, then I found MB Irish Green." Do you (or anyone else) have a sense of how that ink first in relation to these two?