Diamine - Eau De Nil

Diamine Eau de Nil - ink drop with a hint of sheen

Eau de Nil has been part of Diamine’s catalog for at least the past ten years (possibly much longer), but has only recently caught my eye. I don’t know how I missed it! The name Eau de Nil translates into English as “water of the Nile”. Eau de Nil was a popular textile and design color in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Diamine Eau de Nil - color palette

Visually, Eau de Nil is a lovely, powerful ink. Traditionally, it’s a pale, light green with slight tan and blue undertones. Diamine’s, however, is a healthy, powdery, mid-teal peacock blue. The Nile doesn’t often look this delicious! This is an eager shading ink with both lights and darks. Lighter areas are the faded blues of a slightly overcast sky. Darker areas bring out the depth and richness of the base color. A blackened edge covered with a purple-copper sheen surrounds areas of pooling. On some papers, hints of this sheen accent stroke edges. A dark, defining halo often frames strokes, as well, which really makes it pop.

Diamine Eau de Nil - ink swatch card with drying

As a writing ink, Eau de Nil is easy to work with across a wide range of papers. Stroke profiles were razor-sharp on all four high-quality test papers, and they were nearly as crisp of office copy paper! Apica ranked best, as its shading range was widest, and drying times were 10-20 seconds. Kokuyo had the darkest halo, and I ranked it evenly with Rhodia and Mnemosyne. The three had drying times of 20-35 seconds. Overall, it performed very well on all three. On office copy, there was no sheen or halo, but strokes were largely clean and crisp. Good performance on copy paper is always a big plus. Overall, it looked great!

I definitely recommend Diamine Eau de Nil. It’s a gorgeous ink and nice shader, and it looks great on a wide range of papers. Like all of Diamine’s standard inks, it’s very reasonably priced. You can’t go wrong!

November 2020