Kindly sent to me by Anja from Papier und Stift, here are seven inks that make up the Taccia Jeans set of fountain pen inks. Taccia is the writing instrument brand of Nakabayashi, an established Japanese company making notebooks and albums.
For those of you not familiar with this project, my investigation involves deconstructing fountain pen inks with water and bleach to observe how they behave and might then be utilised for creative purposes other that handwriting.
Seven bottles of ink, make up the set.
This is actually a rather lovely concept celebrating the many shades of black and blue denim and highlighting the fading and ‘washed out’ effects of denim jeans over their lifetime. And when used as ink straight from the bottle the colours do shade nicely from dark to light. But sadly for Taccia, my deconstruction swatch process identifies a green component in three of the inks which washes out with some great chromo. The inks are available in 40ml bottles with some nice box packaging to boot. And if you fancy some, click here!
If you want to see more Taccia inks, I have also swatch tested their Japanese Artist ranges. For the Hokusai and Syaraku swatch tests click here.
And just to add, the background used to photograph the swatch cards on is in fact my trusted Levi’s denim jacket which is just over 30 years old and still going strong! I’ll never forget that superb poster Levi’s did with a group of Buddhist monks in their orange robes dancing down a road with one wearing a Levi’s red label denim jacket. The shout line was something along the lines of “there are some worldly goods you just can’t part with”.
I am also running a workshop here at my studio in Rochester on Saturday 13 May 2023. For details click here.
And HEY! If you’re interested to know more about how to use fountain pen inks in more creative ways – whether it’s simply to observe their chromatic behaviours, or, to recreate one of my swatch cards, or, to learn how to use them in watercolour painting, illustration and calligraphy, why not check out my online course?
FOUNTAIN PEN INK ART 