Platinum Mix-Free Sunny Yellow - May 2015 Ink Drop
Pen: Pilot Metropolitan (M)
Paper: Rhodia Dotpad 80gsm
Shading: moderate to high
Saturation: low to medium
Flow: medium
Dry Time: 8 seconds

I'd heard a lot about the Platinum line of inks, but hadn't had the opportunity to try one yet. Luckily, Goulet Pens always comes through with new and interesting inks to try in their Ink Drops. Platinum Mix-Free Sunny Yellow is an ink that is specifically designed to be mixed with any of its sister inks in the Mix-Free line. I'd heard that there was some confusion around the name "Mix-Free" because some folks took that to mean that it *shouldn't* be mixed, when in fact it's just a somewhat poor translation of the term "mix freely."

The other inks in the mix free line include pretty much every color of the rainbow, along with black, to give you free reign to create any color that you wish. Platinum has a nice little chart that shows what a 1:1 mixture of any of the inks will look like. I wouldn't mind trying this out one day just to see what kind of results I can get. To date, I've only mixed one ink - the Pen Addict "Scabix" mix of Rohrer & Klingner Salix and Scabiosa. That result was awesome, so I can only imagine what kind of fun a full rainbow of colors could be.

Sunny Yellow is a pretty basic yellow (likely because it's meant to be mixed), but I was surprised by the shading that the ink gives. I expected the Mix-Free line to be pretty muted and dull, like a lot of the pen manufacturer inks are - but surprisingly it was anything but that. I'm not even a huge fan of yellow, but if I were I could see myself using this as a stand-alone ink.

Along with a good bit of shading, the ink flows really well from a medium nib. It's not hugely saturated, but from what I've experienced, most yellows and oranges aren't. It has a very decent dry time at 8 seconds as well.

As you can see from the swabs, Sunny Yellow almost exactly matches De Atramentis Mahatma Ghandi in swab form. On paper, Mahatma Ghandi is slightly different in that it doesn't shade nearly as well, and is a little more neon and "glowy" on the page.

I think Sunny Yellow has prompted me to give the Platinum Mix free inks a try. Goulet sells a sample kit of those inks, so I might give them a try. If you're interested in a bottle of Sunny Yellow, you can pick up a 60mL bottle for $20. Definitely not cheap by any means, but you do get a decent volume. I would probably try the samples first to get an idea of what colors you want to mix, and then spring for the bottles.