Goulet Pen's September Ink Drop - The Maze

For the September Ink Drop from the Goulet Pen Company I decided to draw a five page maze. I drew five pages because I liked the colors so much. The following scans make up this maze.

Start on the page labeled '1' (in the bottom left hand corner) at the circle labeled 'Start'. Follow the pathways until you arrive at one of the circles labeled '2B', '3A', or '3B'. Then go to the page with the number of your circle. Look for the circle on the new page with the same number and letter as your circle. ex. If you arrived at the circle labeled '3A', go to page 3 and continue from the circle labeled '3A'. From this new circle, follow the pathways until you get to another circle, and so on. The goal is to get to the circle on page 5 which is labeled 'End'.

That's all there is to it. Simple. Well, okay, it is a little bit more difficult than the August Ink Drop maze.

So here are the pages.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page4

Page 5

If you succeeded in solving this maze, you might want a bigger challenge. Maybe the 90 page maze and contest posted here will fit the bill. There is still time to enter.

That it for this month.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's September 2011 Ink Drop - Part 6

For the fifth and final page of my September Ink Drop I paired Private Reserve Sherwood Green and Waterman Florida Blue. This was another great combination. The colors look very good together, so the maze looks pretty cool. Here is what it looks like:

As I said in the previous post, the Sherwood Green surprised me because it turned out to behave very well. In the past I had used it in a cheap notebook and it performed worst than any ink I have ever used. On the Clairefontaine paper that I draw the ink drop mazes on it worked great. So make sure you use a good fountain pen friendly paper for this ink. I really like the bright green color.

The Waterman Florida Blue is a new ink to me. I used it in my Ducati Limited and I found that the line it produced was inconsistent. The line varies from a fairly pale blue to a good medium blue. I always use a Fine nib and so I don't really see a lot of shading with most inks. With the Florida Blue I think a broader nib would show quite a bit of shading. The ink dries quickly though. I had no smearing or smudging. There are so many blue inks on the market that there are herds of medium blues that are as good or better, in my opinion.

Here is what the maze looks like laid out in one place.

I will be posting the scanned pages in a couple of days so that you can take a crack at solving it. I'm quite pleased that after I put the node labels in at random, it turned out to produce an interesting maze right off. I didn't need to make any edits.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's September 2011 Ink Drop - Part 5

For the fourth page of the September Ink Drop maze I paired Noodler's North African Violet with Private Reserve Sherwood Green. This was a great combination. I really like the way the two colors go together. I talked about the North African Violet in my last post. In short, it is a very good ink and color which dries quickly.

In the past I had a bad experience with Private Reserve Sherwood Green and I wasn't looking forward to using it. My previous experience with it was with cheap notebook paper. The paper just soaked up the ink like a sponge and the line was uncontrollable. I did an page of my third maze with it and it turned out terrible. On the Clairefontaine paper Sherwood Green was a totally different ink. True, it still took a longer time to dry than any of the other inks, but the line was crisp. The color is a good bright green, like the Oakland A's green. My opinion of this ink has changed 180 degrees. The paper makes the difference.

Here is a picture of the fourth page of the maze with the two Lamy Safari pens I used. There is a subtle difference to this page. It is drawn counter clockwise unlike most of my mazes. You might find that you get dizzier than usual. I know I did.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's September 2011 Ink Drop - Part 4

I liked the Diamine Monaco Red and the Noodler's North African Violet well enough that I used them to draw the third page of this month's maze. Both ink worked very well and gave no problems. Here is a picture of the resulting page of the maze. The pens I used are alongside it.

Yesterday I finished my fifth big maze. I took an hour break , but I felt lost and confused without a big project in progress. Now things are back to normal because I started my sixth maze.

Anyway, that's it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - The End and a Contest!

Today is the day that we finally get the last pages of my first maze. As I mentioned previously I thought it would be fun to have a contest. Simply put, the contest is to see who will be the first to solve this maze. So the goal of this contest is to be the first person to email me the correct solution path.

What I need to see is a list of the nodes you pass through on the correct path.

For example:

1-2A -4A-5C- …. -90C-91-Finish

If this list is not around about 40 nodes long, it will not be the one I'm looking for. I believe that there is only one correct solution, but if you find a valid one that is different than the one I expect, you could still win. I will just have to check your results closely and I may have to email you for clarification.

Please include your name in your email, but you don't have to include an address or phone number. I will contact you by email first if you are the winner. The winning entry will be the first correct valid entry that I receive in my email.

What will you win? Well I'm offering a 15,000 US cent First Prize, which will be paid in the form of a gift card. Also you will receive the Original Art Work of my August Ink Drop Maze which was quite popular. You will also be World Famous!

Email your entry or questions to jmwhitus@yahoo.com.

Here are the final pages of the maze.

Page 90

Page 91

Because it can be a pain to find the pages you need on the blog I have put up a .Zip file on 4shared.com. You can download the entire maze at this link. The resolution of the pages should be better with these files.

Good luck and enjoy!

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's September 2011 Ink Drop - Part 3

The samples in Goulet Pen Company's September Ink Drop all have a travel destination in their name. For the second page of this month's test maze I paired the Caran d'Ache Grand Canyon with Noodler's North African Violet. As I mentioned in my last post I was recently at the Grand Canyon, but I've never actually been in North Africa. I've seen a very small part of it while passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was pretty cool to see two continents at the same time.

As I said before the Caran d'Ache is a great ink. I really like the color because it is a neutral brown. It shows off other colors very well. It is a very well behaved ink that dries quickly. Can you tell that I like it?

The Noodler's North African Violet is also a well behaved ink. It also dries quickly. I experienced no smudging or smearing on the two pages I used it on. It is a bright purplish ink, not really as reddish as I would have expected. It worked very well in the Lamy Safari with an Extra Fine nib. The shading wasn't really noticeably with such a fine nib.

Here is a picture of the second page of the maze. The Pilot Vanishing Point and the Lamy Safari that I used are there beside the maze.

By the way, I've done all of the line work for this month's maze, but I haven't put in the node numbers or solved it yet. I'll get on that soon. It is a five page maze. I think it will be fun.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's September 2011 Ink Drop - Part 2

All five of the ink samples in Goulet Pen Company's September Ink Drop have a travel destination in their name. For the first page of this month's test maze I decided to pair up Diamine Monaco Red and Caran d' Ache Grand Canyon Brown. While Monaco is a place I'm very unlikely to every make it to (unless I get very rich from selling mazes for thousands of dollars per page), I actually visited the Grand Canyon last summer.

The Monaco Red is a good red. When I think Monaco I think of the Formula One race there, and when I think of Formula One, I think of Ferrari. The Diamine Monaco Red is not Ferrari red. It leans a bit too much to the pink instead of the passionate scarlet red of Ferrari. Still it is a very good ink. It dries quickly. I didn't have any smudging or smearing.

The Caran d'Ache Grand Canyon Brown is also very good. I like this brown because it is a neutral brown. I used it in two pages of this month's maze and in both cases it really works well with the color it was paired with. It also dries very quickly and is easy to work with. It is the color of wet sand, or the color of fair skin under a sun hat. It would make a handy brown for art work. But maybe not for signing legal paperwork.

Here is a picture of the first page of the maze along with the two Pilot Vanishing Points I used to draw it.

Here is a picture of me at the Grand Canyon last year. I really didn't have a chance to look at the view, because I was working on my fourth maze. I heard that it was impressive though.

Here is a picture of the actual canyon. Wow, it is big! I'll have to go back and take a look at it.  The Caran d'Ache Grand Canyon would work great to sketch this.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 89

We are nearing the end of my first maze. Here is the next to the last page. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 89

Here is the same page in the wild. To the left is today's page. To the right is the 89^th page of my fifth maze which I drew today. Then towards the top is the first page of the September Ink Drop maze. I've been quite busy lately.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 88

Here is the next page of my first maze. Believe it or not we are almost done with it. I will be announcing a contest next week when I post the last page. As you might expect it will involve actually solving the darn thing. But for now here is the page

Page 88

Here is the same page in the wild. Again it is sunflowers. I think I've got a Van Gogh thing going on here.

That's it for today.
Jonathan

Goulet Pen's September 2011 Ink Drop - Part 1

There was a time, and some of you out there are old enough to remember it, that a student had to do a rough draft of an essay, with a pen or pencil on paper, before typing up a final draft to turn in. There were no word processing programs that checked our grammar and spelling. If we made a mistake on our final draft, we had to use correction fluid, line up the paper and try to type over the mistake. It was brutal, but it toughened the student up to face the real world. It is difficult to imagine those days now.

It is also difficult to imagine a world without Goulet Pen Company's Ink Drop Club. Until last year around this time members had nothing to look forward to. The future was a blank, barren and desolate. Now members can look forward to receiving samples of cool inks to try out every month without fail, regular as clockwork. It provides joy and purpose in life.

Therefore it is fitting that Brian and Rachel Goulet celebrate the one year anniversary of the Ink Drop Club with a great package. Along with the samples, they have included a small, but handy Clairefontaine notebook perfect for jotting down brilliant ideas or tedious to do lists. The Clairefontaine paper is perfect for use with fountain pens and ink. It is a nice bonus, but as usual the ink samples are the real treat.

The theme for the month is “Inkiversary Travels”. All of the samples have in their name a travel destination. Here they are:

Caran d'Ache Grand Canyon

Diamine Monaco Red

Noodler's North African Violet

Private Reserve Sherwood Green

Waterman Florida Blue

It looks like a great selection of colors to me. I'm getting off to a late start this month because it took so long to run the ink from last month out of my pens. Besides the Ink Drop maze, I managed to draw twenty pages of my fifth maze with the August inks. The Lamy pens are long range pens!

Here is a picture of the September Ink Drop.

You can join the Ink Drop Club here.

That's it for today!

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 87

Here is the next page of my first maze. There are only 3 more to go after this one. First, here is the scanned and edited version.

Page 87

Here is the same page in the wild. Again it is on the patio with the sunflowers.

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That's it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 86

Here is the next page of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 86

Here is that same page in the wild. Well, not the wild maybe, but on the patio with my wife's Sunflowers in the background.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Bordeaux vs. Pinot Noir

The other day I was sitting on the patio enjoying a fine summer evening. Vidaldi's Four Seasons playing on my iPod, a good Giuoco Piano opening game of chess played out to an interesting draw, a cool onshore breeze, a glass of locally produced Pinot Noir, and a towering Sunflower above me.

Who could ask for more? But I did have more. As usual I was working on my maze.

Well, anyone that knows me can tell that this is a posed picture. What gives it away is the glass of wine. I'm far more likely to have an old Taco Bell cup filled with Diet Coke in front of me. I confess that the pictures are just a set up for an important research project.

The August Ink Drop included a sample of Montgrappa Bordeaux ink. Bordeaux is fine wine produced in France reputed to be some of the best in the world. BevMo has a Chateau Ausone 2007 St-Emilion for a mere 1059.99 dollars a bottle (that 1059.99 instead of 1060 is to make you think it is cheaper). That seems a bit steep, so why not see if some of our California wine could work as well as the Bordeaux? It seemed like a question that needed to be answered, so I set about doing just that.

It turns out that I didn't have to open and possibly waste a new bottle of wine. I had a partly filled bottle of well aged left over wine which had be in the fridge for sometime before being move to the top of the fridge. It was left over from a Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years ago. I doubt if it was even potable any longer, but I wasn't going to drink it.

I was going to fill a fountain pen with it and draw a maze with it. Here is a picture of the filling process. The 'wine' is so corrupted it is actually brown.

The Montegrappa Bordeaux in my Ducati Limited pen worked great, It flowed smoothly and shaded even with a fine nib. The Concannon Pinot Noir was less satisfactory. In fact is was almost invisible. It could be the pen's fault, but somehow I doubt it. The Pinot Noir is not dark enough. Maybe I should have tried a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Under UV light the Pinot Noir shows up a little better as you can see in this a picture.

It was too difficult for me to draw with invisible ink, so I decided not to finish this one.. Besides, an invisible maze is getting close to useless. I'm not saying it is totally useless, just sort of.

The results are fairly conclusive; the Montegrappa Bordeaux is much better than the Pinot Noir when it comes to drawing with it.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 85

Here is the next page of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 85

Here is the same page out in the wild. It is down in Monterey at Asilomar State Beach back in July. One of the great things about Monterey is the natural air conditioning. It might be up in the 80's or 90's in San Jose, but be in the 60's or lower 70's down here. It can be a nice break. Oh yeah, the scenery is pretty nice too.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 84

It is a day late, but here is the next page of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 84

Here is the same page in the wild. It is again down in Pacific Grove at Point Pinos.

You've heard of sea foam. It has a poetical sound to it I think. Here is some of the stuff. Sometimes the wind will catch up a big glob of sea form and send it whirling down the beach.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's August 2011 Ink Drop - Finale

The Noodler's Blue Nose Bear ink that was one of the samples in the August Ink Drop from Goulet Pen Company is suppose to react to UV light. The card that came with the samples says to use it on ivory paper for the best effect. Unfortunately I don't use anything except bright white paper because I want to see the colors of the inks and I think white paper does shows them best.

But I do have a notebook that has some off white paper. It is the one I use for my flight log. I'm not a pilot, but I play one in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Here is what the log book looks like. I write kind of small.

So I drew a very simple one page page to test the Noodler's Blue Nose Bear. With the paper in this notebook I did notice some feathering and a little bleeding of the ink. This is to be expected with paper not designed for fountain pens. Yous can see the blue halo effect where the word 'Start” is in this picture.

Now here is the page under UV light. The picture is not the best. In real life you can make out a little reaction, but not much. It seems to be mainly the light blue halo part of the light that reacts. The scotch tape reacts more than the ink. I'm guessing that the effect would be more pronounced using a Board nib instead of a Fine one.

For those of you who want a simple maze, here is the scanned and lightly edited version.

Now I'm ready for next month's Ink Drop. If you are interested in recieving sample ink you can join the Ink Drop here.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 83

Here is the next page of my first maze. There are only 7 more pages after this one. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 83

Here is that same page down at Point Pinos in Pacific Grove again.

It is fun to walk out on the rocks and check out the tide pools. 

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's August 2011 Ink Drop - The Maze

For the August Ink Drop from the Goulet Pen Company I decided to draw a four page maze. The following scans make up this maze. Start on the page labeled '1' (in the bottom left hand corner) at the circle labeled 'Start'. Follow the pathways until you arrive at one of the circles labeled '2A', '3A', or '2C'. Then go to the page with the number of your circle. Look for the circle on the new page with the same number and letter as your circle. From this new circle, follow the pathways until you get to another circle, and so on. The goal is to get to the circle on page 4 which is labeled 'End'.

That's all there is to it. Simple.

So here are the pages.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

I hope that you enjoy the journey!

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 82

Here is another page from my first maze. We are running out of them. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 82

Here is that same page in the wild. This is at Point Pinos in Pacific Grove now that the sun has come out. I love the blues in the sky and sea.

That's it for today.

Jonathan

Goulet Pen's August 2011 Ink Drop - Part 5

Sailor Jentle Epinard was the last ink to be tested from the August Ink Drop. I loaded it into a Pilot Vanishing Point, the same one that I used for the Noodler's Blue Nose Bear. I paired it with Waterman Havana Brown for the maze, which I have already talked about.

Epinard is French for spinach (you know the French have a different word for everything). You would expect this ink to be very deep green and so it is. I don't know if it is as dark as spinach. I don't eat as much spinach as I use to when I was younger. They tell me that when I was 1 year old I went through a stage where spinach was the only thing I ate. So it was probably spinach that I was eating that afternoon while sitting in my high chair in the kitchen and the clothes washing machine attacked me. Well it tried to attack me. It had become off balance enough that it was rocking from side to side so much that it was swaggering menacingly towards me. Yes it was frightening and I avoid doing laundry as much as possible even to this day.

Nevertheless, the Sailor Jentle Epinard was a pleasant ink to use. It took a little longer to dry than the other inks in this month's sample. I had a couple small smears while drawing the test maze, but none on the two other pages I used it on. It seems to me that there is an olive tint to this green. It is a perfectly good ink, especially for those times that you are coloring in a Popeye cartoon. And there are probably several other times a good green ink will come in handy.

So I hope this quick review will be helpful. It is unlikely, but you never know. Here is a picture of the last page of this month's maze along with the pens I used.

I've been even more lazy than usual, so I still haven't scanned in the maze yet. I'll post the whole thing in a few days though.

Jonathan

A Maze - Page 81

Here is another page of my first maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 81

Here is that same page in the wild, well, around my apartment. There was a humming bird buzzing around these flowers, but it zoomed off as I got close.

That's it!

Jonathan