Colorverse - Dokdo
Deep, but brilliant, this marine teal is Dokdo from the Korea Special Inks series by Colorverse. Some of my favorite blues are part of the broader teal category, and Dokdo is particularly appealing. It’s a difficult color to fully capture in images, so in most of the images I’ve used a scanner. The whites are a bit blown out in some, but the ink color was my priority.
This ink is actively both tropical blue and tropical green. On most papers, individual strokes are green in saturated areas, but by the time you reach the lighter shaded stroke ends everything has changed. The tropical green becomes a bright Caribbean blue! It’s mesmerizing. Together they give us a peacock blue, but blue and green are equal co-stars, and neither gives up the spotlight for long.
I found Dokdo to be smooth and confident, and it’s wet in flow and feel. My test pen was a Platinum Procyon (the maki-e nishikigoi with the beautiful koi fish theme) in a medium nib. Flow was consistent, and there were no problems with feathering at all. The ink was just as brilliant, and just as sure on cheap office copy paper, as it was on any of my premium coated and uncoated papers. Drying was fast and show-through was never a problem on any of them.
I think this is an ink that many people will enjoy. The color separation gives it a lot of personality. It’s fun without being distracting. There’s huge creative potential, and I see it as a nice daily ink for work settings, too. You can easily find Dokdo online or at most shops carrying Colorverse inks.
Special thanks to @artist_motti (she’s the designer behind some of my favorite Colorverse box and label art, including Dokdo), and to @Colorverse.ink for sending this ink and several others over as gifts!