Monthly Ink Challenge - Season IV

[LizEF]

6 hours ago, yazeh said:

Think of this as a handwritten first draft. It is a  courageous act of open creation. Plus you give us all, the opportunity and the pleasure to brainstorm, suggest ideas, mess around with your characters & Invent new ones, imagine alternate endings, do visual interpretations etc...

It's alright to forget, that's part of the process. 

(Well, I don't forget, but it seems @InesF needs a refresher! )

 

6 hours ago, yazeh said:

Plus you marry ink reviews with a story, which make it compelling by bringing joy to many peoples lives, in these trying times 🙏

😊

[InesF]

15 hours ago, LizEF said:

(Well, I don't forget, but it seems @InesF needs a refresher! )

+1 👍

"[...] Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy." -- shamelessly copied from song lyrics, from a time long gone. 😌

How can I be happy? "I have learned - and it took me years! - to forget!" -- unknown author of the present time  

[yazeh]

4 hours ago, InesF said:

+1 👍

"[...] Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy." -- shamelessly copied from song lyrics, from a time long gone. 😌

How can I be happy? "I have learned - and it took me years! - to forget!" -- unknown author of the present time  

Professor Eeeness, whose laughter heals the wounds of our heroes  

 

[LizEF]

7 hours ago, InesF said:

+1 👍

"[...] Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy." -- shamelessly copied from song lyrics, from a time long gone. 😌

How can I be happy? "I have learned - and it took me years! - to forget!" -- unknown author of the present time  

3 hours ago, yazeh said:

Professor Eeeness, whose laughter heals the wounds of our heroes  

[yazeh]

I was inspired by @LizEF Quin, Makhabesh and Essri's adventures, to reproduce some of the ancient prophecies from the Muirdoor scrolls....

 

"It has been, said that at the eye of Muirdoor, where only the purest of heart and the darkest of the minds can be, the dragon would be born again, when the most cynical will sacrifice wings for the most pure, so that of pain & rage, fire is reborn, evil is naked and balance is restored once again..."

 

Now like most prophecies, these shouldn't be taken literally...

 

Inks used: 

Kala Onyx (brown/purplish background wash)

Kala Moonlight Tide

KWZ Orange

Lennon Tool Bar Cat General (Tan)

 

Sacrifice

Transformation

 

Rebirth

 

[LizEF]

Love it, @yazeh!

[yazeh]

2 hours ago, LizEF said:

Love it, @yazeh!

It makes ne happy ☺️. I hope one day they serve. They came through dreams, believe it or not. They have been sitting about and I had to finish them and have divine intervention write the prophecies 😊

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, yazeh said:

It makes ne happy ☺️. I hope one day they serve. They came through dreams, believe it or not. They have been sitting about and I had to finish them and have divine intervention write the prophecies 😊

  Dreams can be fun.  Mine are always more interesting and more detailed if I eat chocolate.

[InesF]

14 hours ago, yazeh said:

Sacrifice [...] Transformation [...] Rebirth

I'm deeply impressed what a lovely Tryptichon! 

Thank you so much for participating in the Monthly Challenge with that much effort! I'm pleased by your motivation!   

 

 

10 hours ago, LizEF said:

  Dreams can be fun.  Mine are always more interesting and more detailed if I eat chocolate.

 That sounds so true ... - ... and so familiar!  

[yazeh]

9 minutes ago, LizEF said:

  Dreams can be fun.  Mine are always more interesting and more detailed if I eat chocolate.

Milk or Dark?  If I have dark I won't be able to sleep

13 hours ago, LizEF said:

  Dreams can be fun.  Mine are always more interesting and more detailed if I eat chocolate.

 

3 hours ago, InesF said:

I'm deeply impressed what a lovely Tryptichon! 

Thank you so much for participating in the Monthly Challenge with that much effort! I'm pleased by your motivation!   

Thanks. The prompt was enticing. Ancient conjures so many images, especially with @LizEF gang of merry man & creatures

 

[LizEF]

3 hours ago, yazeh said:

Milk or Dark?  If I have dark I won't be able to sleep

I don't really like dark chocolate - at least, not alone.  I almost always eat milk chocolate - but usually, my chocolate is in the form of ice cream.

[yazeh]

7 hours ago, LizEF said:

I don't really like dark chocolate - at least, not alone.  I almost always eat milk chocolate - but usually, my chocolate is in the form of ice cream.

[LizEF]

32 minutes ago, yazeh said:

[Mercian]

10 hours ago, LizEF said:

I don't really like dark chocolate...

 

Dark Chocolate is, mostly†, Boy Food.
It is known.

 

† My mother was the exception to this rule. She loved the stuff, as did my father. I inherited my preference for it from both of them

[InesF]

Monthly Ink Challenge IV – April 2025

 

The set consists of the following inks and fountain pens:

Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün – in Stipula La22 V-flex

Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin – in Magna Carta Mag600 x Santini flexi

J.Herbin Bleu austral – in Waterman Carène F

fading out: Diamine Writers Blood – in Pelikan M600 Red-White EF-stub

 

Here is the inktroduction on F.Schimpf A5 letter paper (slightly off-white):

 

And here is the status report from March 26^th on white paper (sorry for the bit overtuned white balance):

(After six months in Season IV it becomes obvious that my colour choices are of limited range - much to my own surprise)
 

Some info about pens and inks.

 

The Stiplula La22 with steel V-flex nib was a spontaneous buy. It is small, has a hourglass shaped slightly slippery metal grip, is heavy, can be called a pocket pen – and: it is beautiful! The last was my trigger to buying it. While it is not among my best pens, I love it nevertheless. The nib is surprisingly soft and allows astonishing line variation – which comes with outstanding ink delivery when flexed. Beware! Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün is my standard spring ink since years. I can't resist it's charm – but I can't endure it's low surface tension. So I tamed it already years ago with some heavy addition of Gum Arabic, which makes it useable with flex and broad writing nibs. Honestly, the ink is too pale to be used with dry nibs and requires the taming to be used with wet nibs. Not much room to move, here.

 

The Magna Carta 600 has a limited edition body but came with the usual gold flex nib. And this nib was a bit off-aligned and had unequally sized tipping points on the tines. So I decided to grind it symmetric and tune it a bit. At the first touch with the grinding disc all of the tipping was gone. What a surprise! The nib is unusable anymore. So I exchanged it with the gold flexi nib from a damaged Santini pen but kept the Magna Carta feed. This was the right choice, as the pen works very well now – but again, not among my top favourites. The Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin ink is probably on the verge of being forgotten with the 2025 release of Apricot Achat. Maybe for good reason, I don't know. I chose it primarily because of it's flowery colour that fits so nicely into the April set. Mandarin is a bit pale for daily use but OK with heavy application – not much different from the situation with Alt-Goldgrün (you see the pattern?). It can as well be an Autumn colour, especially when small amounts of 4001 Red and 4001 Brown are added.

 

There is not much to tell about the Waterman Carène – except for: best having two of them! Besides it's beautiful design, it's excellent stiff smooth gold nib and its sturdy metal body it is still conceptually from an era when performance was the most important property of a fountain pen. No surprise, it is among my top 10. All of my Waterman pens are able to deal with almost any ink in my collection, from medium-low to highest surface tension with the ink lines always looking good. Not many other pens are able to do that. Therefore it was the obvious choice for the low surface tension high viscosity J.Herbin Bleu austral ink. I love the colour – and I'm extremely picky with blues – it complements the other two April ink colours and harmonizes with them nicely.

 

The Pelikan M600 Red-White EF with Diamine Writers Blood is fading out within the next few days. The ink does not much for me. However, it grew on me just a bit during March. The ink has no sheen, even not in heavy application and the medium-low surface tension disallows shading with any other then the most dry writing pens. All you want to add to your handwriting must come from line variation. Combining the medium-wet ink with the quite-wet Pelikan nib could have had ended in a disaster. However, the stub-ground EF nib does unusual fine lines with character and pulls out some playful colour variations from Writers Blood. I will remember this combination and extend the experiments in the future.

 

Associating April with spring, with the freshest green moss mats, with the first tiny flowers peeking out from the ground and with some sunny warm days is so obvious. But, the full resurrection of life is reserved for May.

German language has a nice rhyme: „April, April, tut was er will“ that tells about the typical quick weather changes during the month. Having light snowfall and some sunshine at the same day is possible. The inspiration quote is obviously:

 

Embrace the contradiction!

 

See you later in April¹, may neither rain nor sunburn stop you!

 

 

PS: I don't feel comfortable leaving you alone with one single quote. Therefore I asked perplexity.ai to provide some quotes that are typical or traditional for the month of April, reflecting both classical and modern perspectives:

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."

— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

 

"April showers bring May flowers."

— Proverb

 

"The April winds are magical,

And thrill our tuneful frames;

The garden-walks are passional

To bachelors and dames."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

^{1) I may be offline during the next two weeks, my reply may come late.}

[yazeh]

Lovely quotes and pens @InesF Looking forward to this month's challenge. There's a new IG ink by Tinten Labor, who embraces your theme. It's aptly named Aprilis Agrente  

In French there's a saying similar to German,  En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil. En mai, fais ce qu’il te plaît. See you in two week or so

[LizEF]

Thanks, @InesF!  Very nice color combo.  Can't wait to see what replaces Writer's Blood.

 

All those April quotes have neglected to mention that taxes are due in April.   Terrible way to ruin what would otherwise be a perfectly fine month.

6 hours ago, InesF said:

Embrace the contradiction!

Since a contradiction cannot exist, it seems to me that the only way to embrace a contradiction is to cease existing, or to become one yourself.  Since I don't recommend ceasing to exist, I'm going to have to go with "Become a contradiction!  Then find another of your kind and embrace!"

 

For those finding this a struggle, perhaps you could just be contradictory.

[Mercian]

10 hours ago, yazeh said:

In French there's a saying similar to German,  En avril, ne te découvre pas d’un fil. En mai, fais ce qu’il te plaît.

 

We English types also have a very similar saying: Cast ne'er a clout 'til May is out.

i.e. don't 'cast off' (remove) any of your clothing until the May (Hawthorn) blossom is out - which tends to start emerging here early in the month of May.

 

 

7 hours ago, LizEF said:

Since a contradiction cannot exist, it seems to me that the only way to embrace a contradiction is to cease existing, or to become one yourself.  Since I don't recommend ceasing to exist, I'm going to have to go with "Become a contradiction!  Then find another of your kind and embrace!"

 

For those finding this a struggle, perhaps you could just be contradictory.

 

You have discovered the maxim by which I live!

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

You have discovered the maxim by which I live!

I'm glad you're just contradictory and not a contradiction - 'cuz if you were a contradiction, you wouldn't exist - just like nowhere, never, no one, and nothing.  (We know these don't exist because somewhere, some time, some one, and something all do exist. And in order for nowhere, never, no one, and nothing to exist, somewhere, some time, some one, and something would each (correspondingly) have to cease to exist.  Since they haven't ceased to exist (as evidenced by this thread), we know that nowhere, never, no one, and nothing don't exist.  Hope that's clarified matters for any who were in doubt.)

[inkstainedruth]

On 3/21/2025 at 3:18 AM, InesF said:

"[...] Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy." -- shamelessly copied from song lyrics, from a time long gone. 😌

I know what song that's from.  I think I've had the album it's on for um, a lot of a lot of decades at this point....  

Of course, my age really got shoved in my face the weekend before this, when I ran into a guy I've known since he was maybe ten, and now he's going grey!