Diamine Autumn Oak: Ink Review

Orange is just the best color. It's beautiful, it's bright and the vibrancy and variation of hues that orange can create make it a really popular color. As ink, orange can show as vibrant and bright, muted and somber, or a million other shades in between. The great thing about Diamine Autumn Oak, is that you get a little of everything each time you write.

Supplies Used:

• LAMY AL-star with medium steel nib (also EF and B nib)
• Rhodia No. 16 dotpad, 80g white paper
• Tomoé River white paper
• Moleskine notebook

Smear Test (Dry Time):

• Slow: This ink took over 30 seconds to dry. This ink could be troublesome for lefties or righties if you are a fast writer.

Drip Test (Water Resistance):

• Low: This ink cannot stand up against water droplets, which gives this ink a low water resistance. You can see that the ink is displaced by the droplets of water in the grid and that the color bleeds out over the grid lines making them almost disappear. All that is left is a slight halo of orange from where they water was applied.

Saturation:

• Medium: You can see that there is a slight difference in color between swabs 1 and 2, but the difference is almost indiscernible between swabs 2 and 3. The color is rich and will get darker the more you put on the page. Your nib size with definitely affect the saturation of your color, the broader the nib the darker the color.

Ease of Cleaning:

• Medium: This ink took little effort to clean off the nib of my pen, but sometimes the bright vibrant color of the orange can stain the inside of converters making it a little harder to clean.

Shading:

• High: Shading galore with this ink! You will see shading with this ink regardless of the nib size used. You can see that even with an extra fine nib you still get a good bit of shading when using this ink. If you want a high amount of shading try using a broader nib to really push the shading of this ink.

Flow:

• Medium: A fast writer will find that the flow keeps up pretty well with this ink. The combination of the medium flow and the slower dry time worked well with my style of handwriting . 

Packaging and Aesthetics:

• 30ml bottle, and 2ml ink samples available!
• The 30ml bottle has a thin opening and larger pens might have an issue fitting inside.

Summary:
Orange inks always make me smile and this one was no different. Diamine Autumn Oak is the perfect mixture of bright orange hues and muted rich tones. This ink screams Autumn not only in the name but in color as well. The shading you can produce with this ink will be reminiscent of the falling leaves from the trees throughout the season. Regardless of nib size you will always see slight variation between the color of the letters due to the saturation and shading you get with this ink. 

You can find  30ml bottles  or a 2ml sample. We also have cartridges available.