Ink Review #12

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

Overview

The color/properties:

Mad Hatter is a pale green that has excellent shading qualities. On the surface, it’s a dusty olive green, with subtle hints of blue shadowing around a much darker green shade. The contrast between its tones is high, and it shades crisply between them. With larger nibs, you may notice some slight browns and greys, but bringing out the more complex notes of this ink is a matter of balance: if the ink lays down from too wet of a pen, you’ll lose the browns, and in turn, gain more of the blue shadows. It would be difficult to get everything this ink has to offer from one pen.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

Wearingeul Mad Hatter had excellent performance across all the test papers. The dusty green color appears on the paper with enough contrast to be easily read, even in low lighting. There wasn’t any feathering or bleed-through during my tests and very little show-through. By and large, the dry times were above average, but they were exceptionally low on Rhodia specifically, where almost all the nibs except for the stub and architect dried within 5 seconds.

As the chromatography suggested, water resistance was also good, especially for such a light color, leaving behind a very readable grey shadow of the writing.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

Mad Hatter performs well. It has a medium-dry flow, but it stays consistent as the nib size increases. While the flow does lead to the drier side, it still feels well-lubricated enough to not experience any discomfort while writing. During my tests, I didn’t experience any hard starts, skips, or stops, and I don’t suspect that this ink would have an issue in many pens. Cleaning was also easy, washing out of the pen almost instantly. Overall, it’s just a very well-behaved ink.

• Performance in a pen: 10/10

• Performance on paper: 10/10

• Color saturation: 6/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 8/10

• Dry time: 8.5/10

• Water resistance: 6.5/10

• Ease of cleaning: 10/10

• Shimmer: None

My personal thoughts...

I really enjoyed this one. After my experience with the other Wearingeul ink in this set, White Rabbit, I expected it to perform on the drier side, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn’t. It’s an excellent shader, especially around the edges where you start to get some blue tones out of it.

I also think the color makes a nice interpretation of The Mad Hatter. Seriously, it’s quite versatile! Obviously, this ink will closely resemble Mad Hatter’s outfit in Wearingeul’s own artwork, but it works for many of the other interpretations the character has had over the years, too. The light and dark olive hues, the subtle blues, the light greys, and the browns, are all applicable to color an image of the famous character.

Other inks in this set:

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.

• A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

• A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

• A Midori MD A5 Notebook

• A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

• A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

• A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook