LAMY benitoite: Ink Review
Hi, fountain pen friends, I'm Brian K. I am a Customer Care Representative here at Goulet and I'm excited to share my first Inksploration with you. I was fortunate enough to get to play around with LAMY benitoite, a lovely grey-blue water-resistant ink from their Crystal inks line. Read on to hear about my inspiration for the drawing and my thoughts on how the ink behaves.
Drawing Inspiration and Technique
The color of LAMY benitoite reminded me of the blue hue of smoke when the light shines through it. I took this observation and ran with it when it came time to do my drawing. I started out by sketching the rough outline of the match and flames using the TWSBI ECO. When I was happy with how it looks, I went in and darkened up some of the lines, making the wood grain, match head, and flames more pronounced. I then grabbed a water brush pen and blurred some of the lines to create depth and used the same brush pen dipped in the ink to fill in the drawing. I alternated between a fountain pen and brush pen, adding more detail until I had a look I was satisfied with.
The water fastness of the ink helped keep the initial layout lines in check, which was key in getting the definition I wanted in the wood grain especially. The shading capability was great for getting the range of color I like to draw with and the ink took really well to being used as a wash or watercolor. The dryness also helped with keeping the lines crisp and defined while drawing and not having to worry about smearing and bleeding into the page. Overall, this ink was surprisingly nice to sketch with and the feel on the page with an EF nib and dry ink is the type of feedback I would like to have when drawing.
Ink Review
Flow: Dry
- Definitely dry but still smooth
- The feel is drier than normal LAMY inks
- Flow out of the ECOs was excellent and worked well in all the other pens I tested before
Dry Time: 20 seconds
- Relatively fast
- Good for a right-hander but might be a bit slow for anyone left-handed
- The trade-off in dry time is the inks eventual water resistance
Water Resistance: Medium
- Plays well with a wash before it fully dries and afterward has excellent water resistance
Shading: Medium
- The shading is subtle with finer nibs
- Still understated with thicker lines but has a good range to utilize
How did the ink behave on other papers?
- Little to no ghosting on Leuchtturm
- Shading on the Leuchtturm paper was excellent as well
- Minimal ghosting on Tomoe
- Ghosting was more apparent because of the dark ink on thin paper.
Special Features Worth Noting?
- The LAMY bottles are very easy to use and fill from.
- The ink is very well behaved on most papers and has little to no bleedthrough and ghosting.
- I enjoyed writing with this ink and it really lets you feel the nib on the paper because of how dry it is.
Comparable Inks
