golden leaves: inkebara deer brown & earth

You wake up to the sound of a raging storm, the raindrops splattering onto the walls, the wind howling through the cracks of the house. The sun is up, under the cover of thick, grey clouds. Only a faded light comes through the windows, not reaching the corners of the rooms, not illuminating the depths of corridors. Everything is under this thin, grey veil because the light isn’t warm, isn’t heating up the world like it is supposed to. Armed with a mug of coffee and thick socks, it is time to make your way through a day’s work.

The actual leaves are taking their sweet time turning golden, but the leaves in my heart turn a crisp golden brown the moment the first thunderstorms arrive at the end of summer. I break out the teas from their forgotten summer corners, wash away the thin coat of dust from my mugs and pull out the fuzzy blankets from the depths of the wardrobes. A late, cold autumn is my favourite season where the weather starts to turn into the chilliness of winter but the last of the autumn leaves are there.

For now, most trees still have their bright green leaves in here and only very few yellow leaves are on the streets. So, I’ve been living my autumn coziness through Inkebara’s second set of inks: browns. Last week, I had mentioned end-of-summer blues. It’s safe to assume the summer’s end in here because I saw sunlight only for a day this week. I’m really not complaining, so let me dive into the beautiful browns that make me happy.

I wasn’t much of a brown ink person until I received Inkebara’s Deer Brown. It flows extremely well and shades nicely. You won’t see much shading in the writing sample as it’s inked in a TWSBI ECO with an absurdly wet fine nib. Wet ink + wet pen is too much for shading to handle apparently. I mentioned before that Inkebara has this ability to nail colours perfectly and this ink is giving me a cozy feeling just by using it. I can almost hear the leaves crunching under my feet. Unfortunately, I have never seen deer in my life before, so I cannot judge how accurate the colour is to actual deers.

Wait.

Wait. Wait.

I have seen deer before. I can’t believe it, it’s like a memory that I forgot I had. About two years ago, I was staying with some friends in the Dutch suburbia with a small woods nearby. We got stranded there -completely voluntarily- for a while because one of the heaviest snowfalls had happened and everything froze. Including the canals. It was also during Covid, so online school meant long, cold walks in the woods. On one such day, we walked through the woods and came upon a fenced off area. In the winter twilight, when it’s still afternoon but the sun is long gone, the animals were barely visible. I did what any sane person would do and dragged my friends to show the little goats that I found. Because enclosure with small-medium sized animals is definitely goats right?

The morning came and we decided to walk through the woods to take a look at the enclosure and its goats again. We packed warm coffee, laced our boots and wrapped our scarves to get ready for the walk. When we reached there, I realised that goats weren’t moving in a very goat-like fashion. They were also not goat-coloured not goat-shaped. They were not goats. Some of my friends realised this much before I did and started laughing. These animals were deer. It was an enclosure that you could feed the deer some fruits or vegetables and take a closer look at them. They were extremely skittish though, whatever we tried to entice them with didn’t even make them come close to the fence.

I have actually seen deer apparently. From very far away. All I remember them being is a slightly reddish brown, but perhaps they’re a different variety than Czech? Dwarf Dutch deer? It alliterates beautifully, but I doubt it is an actual variety of deer.

Nevertheless, “Deer Brown” has been an ink that I’ve been enjoying immensely. A perfect golden brown with the tiniest suggestion of green. Just a beautiful colour.

The second ink today is a much different brown. A reddish brown called “Earth” which does remind me of the iron-rich earth of the mountains and the unglazed terracotta pots that are everywhere in my house. It’s fascinating colour too, it seems to shift towards pink-brown, then orange-brown, to red-brown in different light and papers. A little unsaturated, mellowed out brown. It seems like other Inkebara inks were quite saturated and rich colours and this ink brings a nice contrast, some variety to their ink range.

It has some dual-shading properties, but nothing as crazy as the Sailor inks. I find that I actually prefer that. A subtle shift to green, mostly surrounding the areas where ink pools. It beautifully earthy and warm. Calm.

The funny thing is that Inkebara let me choose the inks I wanted to try out and I was super excited to give “Earth” a go because of that subtle dual-shading magic. “Deer Brown” was Inkebara’s suggestion for me to try out. In the end, I completely fell in love with “Deer Brown” and used “Earth” less so in my daily writing. You should definitely listen when an ink maker is suggesting you one of their own inks.

I want to add one last thing before I finish this off. The swatches on Midori came out looking pretty dry and light because somehow the ink doesn’t get absorbed into the cotton swab very well. The “Deer Brown” shows some black sheen with a second swipe of the cotton swab and the “Earth” shows more of the green dual-shading. That, along with it’s behaviour on uncoated, sub-par paper gives me the impression that these inks somehow don’t get absorbed into the page directly. It sits on top of the page for a longer amount of time rather than sinking in. It’s interesting.

In short, using all of these Inkebara inks puts a smile in my face. The absolutely beautiful labels might have contributed to this. Just look! I’ve been inking some friends’ pens with them as well -as you do when you become the friend with ink. Everybody is a fan. Since sharing is caring, we have decided to let you try one of these wonderful inks as well. A giveaway is open on my Instagram page to win a brand new bottle of “Deer Brown” ink. I’m (not) sorry to inform that I’ll be keeping my bottle to use for the rest of the days.