A Macabre History
Proctor's Ledge, and the illustrated bottle label, is a memorial to the 19 innocent victims of the Salem Witch Trials that were hanged at this particular site.
The ink is as dark as the theme. The center of the line is rich in saturation and appears almost to be a black. The warm, brown undertone comes through where the ink is less saturated.
An Ink with Secrets
As Nathan Tardiff (owner of Noodler's Ink) illustrates in his video, the ink has an interesting chromatography. When spread on a paper towel, the rich brownish-black separates into a fluorescent yellow and a fiery red. Using a blacklight, these color separations become more evident.
However, when one uses this ink normally, the saturation hides the fluorescence. Nathan's video may lead some to believe that the sheen and fluorescent tones would be common when writing on a standard paper. It isn't. When I asked about this discrepancy, Nathan clarified that this effect is best seen on craft paper, tag or poster board. Below, you will see a sample of the ink written on Rhodia 80gsm, plain paper.
Getting a little creative with this ink, you can produce the fluorescence by using a water brush to dilute the ink. This can be a particularly effective implementation when it comes to doing illustrations.
In the animation above, the black lines were done using a Pigma Micron waterproof pen and a Noodler's Konrad brush pen was dipped into a very small amount of Proctor's Ledge to wash the page and create varying layers of saturation. The lightest areas proved to show the fluorescence under blacklight.
Turn it up to 11
To amp up the fluorescence and make Proctor's Ledge a warm grey ink to use as a color fill for my InkTober drawings, I mixed approximately 1 part of Proctor's Ledge with 3 parts of Noodler's Whiteness of the Whale. The resulting drawing was posted as Day 14's illustration :
(Click on the image above to see the video on Instagram.)
You, too, can have fun creating UV reactive writing and drawings. We've put together a pen and ink set that allows you to brew this inky combination yourself. It includes the aforementioned Noodler's Ink Proctor's Ledge (3oz), Whiteness of the Whale (1oz), a Konrad demonstrator fountain pen, a small Rhodia notepad and a portable blacklight on a keychain.
Since Proctor's Ledge was created as a limited release during the Commonwealth Pen Show, we anticipate the ink will be gone for good once it sells out completely. For a Noodler's fan, this is a must-own bottle of ink (gotta catch 'em all!). For artists, letterers and illustrators, this ink has a number of fun, creative applications, especially when paired with a blacklight.