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Day 20!

Welcome to day twenty! Our ink today is Astral.

The color/properties:

Astral is another one of Diamine’s “chameleon” inks. It’s a type of shimmering ink with particulates that are supposed to change color depending on the angle and lighting in which you view the ink. Does the color change effect work though? Not really. It was green, and some blue. But mostly green. The base color is a deep black with a low degree of shading. The darkness of the color helps the particulates stand out, making them remarkably bright and eye-catching. This one might appear the brightest out of all the chameleon inks in the calendar thus far.

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm

How did it perform?

I didn’t experience any bleeding or feathering on either of the test pages, and I didn’t experience any clogs or hard starts during my tests. This ink had a wet flow, but unfortunately, it didn’t feel like there was a lot of lubrication and I found the overall writing experience to be subpar and borderline uncomfortable. The shimmer distribution was mostly good, but there was noticeably less coverage with the broad nib. On the plus side, there weren’t any difficulties cleaning the color or the particulates out of the pen with a single soak and flush.

My personal thoughts…

Much like my opinion about Glacier and Blizzard, I can’t help but feel that this is a rehash of Nightfall from day 5, but in black. At first, I liked this one better because the chameleon effect was brighter and more visible, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that Astral feels so dry. It was surprising, too — when I swatched this ink, it flooded the dip pen and I was expecting it to be the complete opposite experience. I want to like this one more, but just thinking of the writing experience makes me not want to revisit it in the future.

More Images/Info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 3 nib units including a Fine, Medium, and Broad. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.

• A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

• A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

Scan of the writing sample

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