Drawing A Line, Somewhere: Goulet Pen's February 2011 Ink Drop

Friday, February 11, 2011

Goulet Pen's February 2011 Ink Drop - Part One

Way back when I started this blog, one of the main features was test mazes using the Goulet Pens Ink Drop samples. This turned out to be a rather large chore mainly because it took so much work to run the ink out of my pens. And I'm sure that has not changed. Still, it was fun for me to do the simpler mazes that I did for the tests. So I've decided to have another go at it.

For the month of February Brian and Rachel Goulet came up with a Valentine's Day themed selection of colors. They called this Ink Drop, “My Inky Valentine”. All of the inks have the word Rose in their name. So, in the February Ink Drop we find:

J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen

Noodler's Ottoman Rose

Noodler's Shah's Rose

Private Reserve Arabian Rose

Private Reserve Rose Rage

I may or may not use Private Reserve Arabian Rose in a maze. It turns out that I already have used that color of ink. I like it and it will be very interesting to compare it to the others in this selection, but I may not have the time to do a maze with it this month.

Anyway, here is what the February Ink Drop looks like. They package has been streamlined over the months as Goulet Pens' work load has increased. Their margins on this project must be razor thin with all the work preparing and mailing thousands of samples each month. Some months have had a sixth bonus sample, which adds to their work and mine when I test them.

The idea for my test mazes this month is to draw a one page maze using one of the Ink Drop colors and a contrasting blue color. I tend to enjoy using contrasting rather than harmonizing colors more often, so the blues are good for me. Not to mention that they were the two colors I had in my two pens when the Ink Drop arrived. The blues you see in these mazes are Private Reserve DC Super Show Blue and Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue. The latter color is my all time favorite.

The completed maze to the right has been drawn with the aforementioned Lake Placid Blue and the Noodler's Shah's Rose from the Ink Drop. I was very impressed by how well this Noodler's offering worked on the Clairefontaine paper. It dried quite quickly so that I only had one smug with it.