Ink Review: Diamine Sherwood Green

Diamine's Sherwood Green was the first ink I ever ordered, aside from blue or black.  When I got my first few fountain pens, the pen itself was the area of focus.  (I started off using cartridges, even).  However, once I realized I didn't need to stick to blue or black, a whole, wide world of ink opened up to me.  I ordered Sherwood Green and Diamine Red Dragon to get myself started.  I was fortunate. Sherwood Green was one of my favorite greens when trolling through the swatches online, and despite the fact that I now have well over a dozen different green inks, it's still one of my favorites.  (It's nearly tied with Montblanc Irish Green).

Diamine Sherwood Green is a deep forest green, with just a hint of blue (which you can see below in the web inkblot test.)  Like most Diamine inks, it flows beautifully, and behaves like a dream.  I've used it in dozens of pens and I have never had it dry up, skip, or exhibit other flow problems for me (that weren't directly related to problems with the pen itself.)

I love saturated, deep jewel tone colors, and this ink is very saturated.  But, for an ink that is so saturated, it shades remarkably well, particularly in a dry-ish pen.  In an extremely wet pen, this ink can trend toward nearly black, so for uber-wet pens, I generally go with a lighter ink.

This ink can also sheen very nicely.  The main sheen is a deep reddish-purple sheen, but you can see hints of gold here and there as well.

There are only a couple of things I don't care for with this ink.  First, I really don't like the Diamine packaging.  I do like my bottles to look fancy.  (I mean, if you're going to have a hobby as esoteric as fountain pens and ink, you might as well be fancy about it.)  Diamine's packaging is very generic and boring…which probably helps keeps costs down quite a bit.  So I don't really dock any points for that.

The other complaint I have is with its water resistance.  It's not. On certain papers (Apica paper, for instance), I have read difficulty keeping the dried ink from getting on my sweaty fingers or hands.  Look at it cross-eyed, and it'll smudge off the paper.  I certainly wouldn't use this ink to address an envelope…

But those complaints aside, this is a really beautiful, rich green color.  And it continues to be one of the favorite inks in my always-expanding collection.