Vinta Inks - Aegean (Armada 1944)

Armada is a fleet of ships, this is mentioned on the Vinta web site as is the Battle of Leyte in 1944.  This was the amphibious invasion of Leyte that started the liberation of the Philippines in the second world war.

Japan had taken the Philippines in 1942,  it was a strategic move because of the need to control the sea routes bringing rubber and petroleum from Borneo and Sumatra to Japan.   For the Americans it was important to regain the Philippines in order to isolate the Japanese military.  It was also personal for MacArthur who had been ordered by Roosevelt to leave the Philippines a month before the Japanese took over.  MacArthur was ordered out on the pretext of organising relief troops in Australia, Roosevelt had actually ordered him out to avoid his capture by the Japanese.  MacArthur always vowed he would return to liberate the Philippines.

The Battle of Leyte Oct-Dec 1944 was the start of the liberation of the Philippines, the beginning of the end of almost three years of Japanese occupation.

Aegean is another shade from Vintas pastel collection.  It is hard to determine what the colour will be based on the sample vial as it is very dark. There is pink and grey in the chromatography but also bright green and bright blue suggesting greater depth than some of the other pastel shades.

I did five Vinta inks for chromatography at the same time.  Initially I thought I had made a mistake as this ink and deep water blue (review yet to be posted) where virtually indistinguishable.  When they dried there was a difference  but it is not a big difference.  Deep water blue is more purple (on the left in photo) to Aegeans pink but it still surprises me how a final ink colour can be so different just with slight variation in the mix of the component shades.

The col-o-ring swatch was pale green when wet and then it dried to a greyish green  with a pale purple undertone.

 
The purple undertone is far more apparent on Tomoe river paper.  The swatches look like two very different inks.

I used a TWSBI 580 with a medium nib for this.  Another pen that has sat on my desk for a few months waiting for me to ink it and use it.  I haven’t been the biggest fan of the Vinta pastel inks so far, this is due to the colours not the quality of the ink.  Aegean holds a bit more promise for me.
On cheap notebook paper there was no feathering but some show through.  The ink dried to a grey-green with the grey dominating, in fact I would now call this a grey ink.  Like many of the other Vinta inks another slow dryer.

On Tomoe it again dried to a grey.  There is some shading but nothing that lifts the colour to make it interesting.

On Rhodia it remained a slow drying ink but there was better shading than on Tomoe and in the grey you get a hint of green, it lifts the colour and makes it more interesting.

This is a another well behaved ink from Vinta, it flows well though on the slower side to dry.  Unfortunately, for me this is another boring colour and as it ultimately dried to grey I am not interested in purchasing more.
In summary –
Saturation – medium
Shading – minimal but it does depend on the paper
Sheen – no
Flow - good
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep – none
Start-up - immediate
Feathering – no
Drying – slow
Cleaning – very easy
Water resistance – not sold as waterproof but I remain really impressed with the water fastness of these pastel shade inks.

After being held under a running tap