Birmingham has a new lineup of beautiful water-resistant inks, their Everlasting Inks.  These inks are quite water-resistant (not 100% waterPROOF) and excellent for writing precious documents.  For sketching or use with watercolors or other fluid mediums over the top, I recommend testing them on your art papers to see how/if they move…  They moved in my Hahnemühle Nostalgie Sketchbook when scrubbed with a lot of water (Jinhao Sharks with fine points), shown below, but less in my Hahnemühle Watercolour Journal, right, using dip pens.

I test all my resistant inks
in the back of my journals before I risk ruining a nice sketch with running inks. The inks are water resistant enough that I could use them in my journals  — I just have to consider what I want in my watercolor washes.  See more below about use with watercolors.

Remember that others review these inks just for writing;
I am also usually interested in how they are used for ink-painting!

I’ve put the three colors right through their paces in my work journal,
on Post-its and cheap yellow legal pads (Mitchell uses the latter)
and on a good Hahnemühle sketch journal, below.

No bleed through in any testing papers.  There was a bit of feathering on a very bad watercolor journal with a fat wet dip pen, see the blobby fat pens top.  It is unlikely that you would use bad watercolor paper and a fat wet dip pen — but if you do, test in the back of the journal. Most of these were tested in fine-nib Jinhao Sharks, and were well-behaved though a bit dry, so will work well in your wet-writing pens. I saw no sheen that I could produce (and didn’t expect it in this ink), and no shading in my samples,
again, not unusual for water-resistant inks.

Above and below, more testing on the smooth paper in my Hahnemühle Nostalgie Sketchbook.  Sketched like a dream on the smooth paper!

Below, again the smoother Hahnemühle journal in watercolor tests.
It is is less absorbent than the watercolor paper.
On this paper, if I let the inks completely dry, they were very water-resistant
(not 100% waterPROOF) to light, fast washes (as opposed to multiple washes or the scrubbing of lettering in the tests top) and moved almost not at all.
At the back of the book when I tested them with a heavier watercolor wash
they moved enough to tinge the clear yellow watercolor wash.
Also, it depended on how many watercolor washings I gave them.
So, as I do with all water resistant inks,
I recommend testing them on your art papers to see how or if they move,
and if you are sketching yellow tulips maybe using a waterproof ink.

 I like what Birmingham says on their website
about their company:
“We started Birmingham Pen Co. in 2012 in the Southside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The region of Pittsburgh where we began once called “Little Birmingham” due to the area’s prolific manufacturing industry in the early 1900’s.  The Birmingham moniker was derived from Birmingham, UK – a manufacturing hub that specialized in, among other things, pen and nib manufacturing with thousands of craftspeople employed in the industry. We chose the name Birmingham Pen Company to share this little known piece of history and
continue in the traditions behind the name.”

Birmingham’s bottles are glass, and functional
even in the small sizes.  I like glass bottles;
they feel like they will last longer.

Birmingham also turns their own pens,
which I’ve noticed often sell out as fast as they make them!
*I LOVE my Model-A Demonstrator, Violet Beauregarde!*

This is a small family business run by four people!  The brothers, Nick and Josh;
Dad is the chief pen machinist; and Mom does one of the coolest things about Birmingham, which is their amazing historic names!

Disclosure, I was gifted with these sample inks from Birmingham.

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