Diamine - Marine
Diamine Marine - accurate ink drop
Marine is one of Diamine’s more popular inks, and I hear it mentioned often in people’s lists of favorites. It’s a gorgeous ink, that’s both optimistic and confident. I think it would make an excellent everyday writer. It immediately reminded me of one of my one of my go-to inks, Robert Oster Tranquility. Marine is less expensive, and it’s available in both 30ml and 80ml bottles.
Visually, Marine is a lovely, saturated, green-blue turquoise, bordering on peacock blue. Compared with standard blues, it has style and flair without being ostentatious. Work or play, it’s very usable in any situation. In wider, wetter nibs, it’s a nice shading ink. Light areas never lighten too much, but it’s enough to add character and a little movement to strokes. There’s a reddish-black edge sheen in the splatter, but none carries over in writing. A defining feature is the strong, dark halo on premium papers. It gives additional definition to strokes, and really makes the ink stand out.
Diamine Marine - ink swatch card and drying
As a writing ink, Marine performs very well. It performed very well on all four premium papers tested. Stroke profiles were very sharp, and well-defined on all. Shading was more pronounced on Rhodia and Kokuyo (both are coated papers), but it was nice on the others, as well. Stroke edging was consistently strong on all four, as well. Drying was 10-20 seconds on Kokuyo and Apica, and 20-30 seconds on Rhodia and Mnemosyne. Overall, it performed well on office copy, too. There was a hint of feather, but it was still quite nice. Sadly, the strong halo disappeared, but drying was very fast at under 5 seconds.
I definitely recommend Diamine Marine. It’s both a beautiful ink, and a beautiful writer. It’s consistent, and flexible across a wide range of papers. On office copy, finer nibs than the wet, juicy medium that I used for testing would likely remove the slight feathering. Diamine remains one of the best deals on the market, and Marine is a beauty!
December 2020