Fascinating video. I had thought my 9 different gray inks were verging on the excessive but now will have to buy more to try these marvellous techniques. Many thanks

Hooray, new video. Mark, thank you very much. As always, it's informative. Greetings from Kharkiv.

Now I know why Diamine Earl Grey is my favourite ink Marc....thank u for explaining why....oh and its my favorite Tea too. Love Alli XXX

Thank you for another great video, Marc! I hope that someday you write a book about drawing with fountain pens! I still have little experience with inks, but I love my De Atramentis Document Black. Have you ever tried the R&K SketchINK line? I think they are a little more wet than DA, but very waterproof too.

Thank you - another great video packed with technical info and inspiration!

This was a terrific video - thank you. I’m a fan of Diamine Earl Grey but I’d not taken the opportunity to fully consider the various properties nor the value as an art ink. If you’ve not tried Lennon Tool Bar’s Atmospheric line, I suspect you might find them of interest - I’ve been using Twilight quite a bit. Thank you again.

I love working with Sailor inks. They work very similar to Diamond Earl grey in that they are made of two components, water resistant and non, and some of them do have that multi chromatic effect. One color I really love using is from the Shikiori line called Rikyucha. It draws sort of olive green wet, and slowly changes to wilted leafy brown dry, hence its namesake. In heavier blended areas there is a bluish undertone as well. Kobe (made by Sailor), Robert Oster, Pennonia , Teranishi and Taccia inks are all worth trying too.

Thank you for the inspiring content Mr Kompaneyets. I am now excited to try Lexington gray in my flex pen. I previously only used it diluted in a brush pen.

Thanks. Now I will have to add Diamine gray to my collection. Thank you & I love your videos. ❤😊👌💯

Just signed up for the crosshatching fundamentals workshop, really looking forward to it!

As always, a very helpful learning experience, thank you for sharing your knowledge! I am a De Atramentis ink aficionado, but I do find the black is too black for my scribblings and the urban grey is too dark for my liking. Water is not a satisfactory method of dilution in my experience, so I use De Atramentis thinner. I highly recommend it!

1. Informed opinions and great technique. 2. Back in my neanderthal/realist days, I periodically swore off true black in favor of Lexington Gray. More range, and you won't get pitch black unless you want it. 3. If you found De Atramentis "Urban Grey" not to your taste, note that they make several different grays. I like the "Fog Grey". But the "Grey" is black as far as I am concerned. 4. One specialty gray I use sometimes is Herbin Gris Nuage, which was the palest gray I could find at the time of purchase. Sometimes I just want a hint of tone to distingush one area from another of blank paper. 5. Off Topic: what do you think of using ink with a watercolor technique? Currently I prefer ink over watercolor paint, brushing (pouring, dripping) it onto watercolor paper. It seems simpler to handle and easier to handle. And you can get some good use out of those super pale Sailor inks like Haha.

very helpful review and applied techniques.

Lexington is a great ink, but that earl gray looks fantastic as a wash.

This is fantastic. Hope to see more ink videos in the future. I think I will give a try with Pilot and Diamine Eal Grey. I have already got Lexington after watching your early videos in the past. Thank you.

Thanks for doing this review of grey inks. I purchased Earl Grey and it works great for shading in my drawings.

I love all these inks, but I really prefer the Fuyu Syogun. It really is a nice cool blue grey that I think shades better than its warmer, redder "Kiri-sa-me" brother, also made by Pilot in the Iroshizuku line. Despite being water resistant, instead of waterproof, these inks work GREAT IN water brushes, with the shading effect making it play nicer in my opinion so long as you wait for the layers to dry. P.S The ink is pronounced "fuyu SHOgun". I don't know why Pilot used a different Romanization for that word specifically. (sho vs syo, Shi vs si). Maybe cause it's an acceptable input when they type.

This was interesting! I have been looking at grey inks and now I think I know which will be the firsts for me. Thank you! 😇🩵🙏🙌🇸🇪

Thank you for a very informative video! I have Earl Grey but have never used it for drawing. Will be inking it in a fine nib today. Question: do you have favorite blue inks that separate out into purples and pinks when water is added? Thanks again for a great video - your work is very inspiring!

I have found an ink and pen combination that for my writing style that is great for my tending to be slow on the start but increasing the longer I write, flowing slowly at first but the more I write increases with time. It can unfortunately turn the XF line into a medium to broad line which requires me to correct words at time due to smearing or spread. A custom tuned XF jinhao x159 with Noodler's Polar Black.

Hi again Mark. Jim from Madrid, Spain (a fellow artist and a New Yorker expat living abroad). Sorry I don't post often but, as you know, I always watch your videos. Great video on "50 Shadows of Grey"... 😁👍 I like the first 2 (Diamine) as water soluable greys... For non soluable inks (to use with watercolor) I use SketchInk because it's the best in quality/price ratio here in Spain. But I'm having trouble finding a "semi-soluble" Black ink at an affordable price to be able to do the "60 shades if grey" (if you know what I mean). Money is always a scarce resource in the Art world (considering everything else - family, mortgage, cars, insurance costs, taxes, etc.) and I need to be able to spend "smart" between all if my Art supplies (mainly - watercolor paper, sketchbooks, paint, brushes, inks, fountain pens, graphite, etc.) due to a limited budget. I don't know if you may be able to help me but... what do you think is a good "soluble" black ink to achieve neutral grey tones when water us applied? I bought Parker Quink Black but it's more if a Sepia black and, even though it's beautiful too, it's not the neutral deep black and grey I'm looking for after applying water (not a grey ink). If you could help me out it would be great, because I know your always very busy and I don't want to bother you. In any case... I really like your channel (as you know) and I watch all if your videos, from which I learn a lot (not too long ago I bought 3 Conte à Paris pencils with which I started to learn the 3 coloured technique after watching your videos). As I said... thank you for sharing your knowledge (at least part of it) and I will continue to watch your channel. Cheers from Sunny Spain!! 😁👍😎✌

Great video on these grey inks. I have been sleeping on Earl Grey, time to order a bottle. What paper or sketchbook do you use when you sketch and use these light washes?

Maybe it was a bad bottle, but I've had some blue feathering with the lexington gray. I thought maybe the paper quality was the problem, but it's been solid with other inks. I know Noodlers can sometimes be inconsistent. I should give it another try.

Hi Mark I too love fountain pens and inks and as an Artist my two favorite inks are Platinum Carbon ink and Lexington gray. I have done ny own lightfastness tests and have found that Diamine Grey performed better than I anticipated. Do you do any lightfastness tests as well? Or how do you preserve your artwork?

I found Opus 88 feed doesn’t keep up with a flex. I had to use an ebonite feed to prevent railroading

It looks to me that you filled your pen up for each ink to test. When you were swapping inks, do you put the ink from the pen back in the bottle it came from? I'd like to fill my pens but I like trying different inks in my pens and I don't know what to do with the "extra" and don't want to waste it.

Hey Marc, I think a great set of inks to review next would be the De Atramentis Artist inks. Not the collection named after great artists but rather the inks specifically designed for artists. They have whimsical labels with various animal drawings on them (a squid for Speia for example). They are waterproof, can be mixed together, come in many colors, are fountain pen safe, and De Atramentis also makes an 'ink thinner' for them, so literally a liquid watercolor set.