Ink

Monday 7.40am

When I was younger, ink came in hard glass bottles with big black shiny plastic tops. It was for fountain pens but you could also draw and paint with it, and this is what I did. And just for fun if you dropped some onto wet paper the ink would spread through it separating out into it's different colours like a bruise. Ink came in different colours of course - blue, black, red, green and brown I think, and also one called "blueblack". This was my favourite. Black was just black, a little plain and a little flat whereas blueblack was blacker than black, such a deep, deep indigo that you could stare into it forever and never see the bottom. Since then if I can I will not use straight black as a colour, although this is much more difficult now with ballpoint pens and inkjet printers. The slightly off colour that can only be got by doing things by hand gives life and vibrancy to what is created, your eye is drawn into the colours and kept interested. Like notebooks in the computer age there will always be a place for the handmade.

Blueblack is also the colour of the sky just before the sun comes over the horizon in the morning.