i n k l o d e

fountain pens, inks, paper and more

Diamine Red Dragon

Diamine Red DragonDiamine Red Dragon bottle

I suppose the argument could be made for some kind of confirmation bias, but I think this ink is very aptly named. Diamine Red Dragon is a bold red with a sort of aged, muted quality to it. I envisage beautiful, detailed illustrations of some fantastical dragon in an old, leather-bound book. The cover is worn and the pages are foxing, yet the images retain an almost magical realism to them– like a moment captured from a world long relinquished to fairy tale and myth.

Red Dragon is a relatively well-behaved ink with some barely visible feathering when flexed on Rhodia paper. No bleeding with normal writing, even on the copy paper I did a quick test on. The shading is on the subtle side, but becomes quite noticeable in brighter light. I never had any flow issues with the ink, and it cleaned out of my pens just fine. To me, this ink has a somewhat similar feel to its brother, Diamine Oxblood, but with far less brown mixed in. Overall, Diamine Red Dragon is a really nice red that would be well suited for anything from drawing to personal writing!   Diamine_Red_Dragon_01

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  • Peninkcillin

    June 28, 2014 at 9:35 am | Reply

    Wow this is really beautiful! I’m liking Diamine inks more and more. The more I review the more I realize how excellent and inexpensive these inks are. And your handwriting is great. One thing that I’d like to know is how can you “afford” to fill up 3 fountain pens for one review? I mean, do you clean them out immediately afterwards or do you use them until the ink runs out? My problem is that usually I can only load one fountain pen at a time because I don’t write a lot and I hate wasting ink.

    • Adam (inklode)

      June 28, 2014 at 9:41 pm | Reply

      I like Diamine inks as well! =)

      I rarely do a full fill for reviews, and I hate wasting ink so I do my best to use them up before cleaning out my pens for the next review. But I do understand the difficulty with using up all the ink if you don’t have a lot of opportunities to write. Some weeks are easier than others for me.

      • Peninkcillin

        June 28, 2014 at 11:59 pm | Reply

        Great! Another question if you don’t mind. One of my biggest peeves when reviewing inks is that I haven’t yet developed a good technique for photographing/capturing the writing samples. I know that some people scan them and others photograph them. I prefer the latter because my cheap scanner can’t handle the subtleties of these colors. But photographing isn’t accurate either. I use natural light but light color temperature can vary depending if it’s sunny or cloudy outside, not to mention all the garbage that gets introduced in post-processing. So how do you do it? It looks to me like your samples are very accurate and you’ve completely eliminated the white background which is something that I would also like to achieve.

        • Adam (inklode)

          June 29, 2014 at 12:07 am | Reply

          Hah, if you don’t mind, I’ll just drop you an email. The answer is a bit long.

          • Ashley Shell

            June 29, 2014 at 5:58 am |

            Hello! Great review! Could you also please send me an email as you did Peninkcillian? I would love to know how to get good photographs of inks/such 🙂 Thank you!

  • bodahchristiansen

    July 26, 2014 at 6:03 pm | Reply

    I am beyond impressed with your work here. It’s quite unique for such a saturated topic and often identically formatted review techniques. I didn’t realize the extent of my boredom until I was referred to your beautifully designed and informed site by Dan from FPGeeks. I’m subtly taking notes. By the way, the Diamine Red Dragon is quite stunning and rich. Thank you for the heads up. — Bodah–

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