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I wanted a darker red than Diamine Red Dragon, to use as an alternate primary pen color to black and blue-black. So I decided to mix my own, so that I could also tune it to the pen. In this case a Lamy Joy with a 1.1 nib that was adjusted to be wetter than stock. About the pen/nib. I discovered that the stock Lamy 1.1 nib is a bit on the dry side, and not wet enough to bring out the color of the ink. So I adjusted the nib to be more wet. But that is a double edge sword, making the pen wet to lay down more ink also means that the ink takes longer to dry. I think I found the ink color that I wanted. But as much as I tried to adjust the pix to look like the ink, it just does get quite there. At the bottom of the image, I have some Red Dragon as a color reference. For anyone thinking about duplicating this mix, I discovered that the color of the ink line depends greatly on the pen. My ink test pen, a Goulet F nib in a dip pen holder had a darker ink line at a lower amount of black ink (20 drops/1ml) than the sample shown below from the Lamy 1.1 nib (30 drops/1.5ml). I had to increase the amount of black ink to get a similar color out of the Lamy. So I recommend you start at a lower amount of black ink, and slowly increase in small steps to get to the color that you want. My final result was 1ml of red ink : 30 drops/1.5ml of black ink And this ink shades. Makes the writing look rather interesting. You can see it in the close up pix of the title. I think this is really a property of the ink itself, not this mix, as I have seen shading with the Sheaffer Skrip turquoise.