Mixing inks

You should NOT mix fountain pen inks. In some cases, doing so can cause precipitates to form that will clog a fountain pen and require a lot of cleaning.

However, say you have a dip pen or a glass pen, you could buy some inks from Herbin, for example, and give it a try like I did. In my case, I mixed Bleu Pervenche (and pretended that it is Cyan), Rouge Opéra (for Magenta), and Bouton D’Or (for Yellow) in different ratios from 3:0:0 to 3:3:3, leaving some out because they’re duplicates (1:1:1 = 2:2:2 = 3:3:3, for example).

In the end, I have a set of “recipes” for lots of colours. Of course, I’m still missing anything that includes a Black, and I did do any dilution with water. However, the end result of these three looks like this:

There are real options for mixing fountain pen inks, including sets from Platinum and Octopus Fluids, in case you’re wanting to do the same thing for a pen without worrying about mucking things up.