Optimist Limited Edition: Spring Colors Trio (2024)

We're delighted to share a new Optimist Limited Edition! We've taken our versatile, permanent ink formula and added a healthy dash of spring color, so you can sketch all the buds and blooms of the season.

This special little set includes three 10 mL Precision Bottles in Lilac, Coral, and Buttercup, hand-mixed by our color experts for the perfect balance between brightness and lightness. Add Optimist White for even softer pastel tones, or add Optimist Primary Magenta, Yellow, and Cyan to create more intense colors and shift the hues in your desired direction.

Available for a limited time only.

<Limited edition release date: March 1, 2024>

Optimist Mixable Color

Introducing Optimist Mixable Color, our original ink for art and design. Optimist is made with natural shellac, a beautiful organic resin that binds pigment to paper, resists UV radiation, and dries totally waterproof. Unlike many drawing inks, Optimist includes only lightfast pigments, so the colors mix perfectly, and your work can be displayed for many years without fading.

Use & Care Tips

Using Optimist Mixable Color is simple: grab a dip pen or brush and get some ink on it. You can use Optimist straight from the bottle; it's highly fluid and moves smoothly across paper. You can also dilute it with Optimist Colorless Medium, the purest form of our water-based shellac. (Dilution with water is possible, and produces some nice textures and effects, but please note that adding water will change the characteristics of the ink and make it less waterproof.)

Optimist dries quickly (within a few minutes for a normal application), so you can layer more inks or watercolors over it with no blending or bleeding. It's also an ideal choice for adding opaque highlights and shadows to your watercolor pieces.

Shake well before using. Keep brushes wet during use and wash promptly for best results. To clean up, try a bottle of Optimist Ink Solvent.

Optimist Story

We opened our art supply business in 2015, and one of the first things we learned was how to make india ink. Our original formula was hand-mixed and much less consistent than Optimist, but our customers loved it because traditional shellac-based ink is just special, and it's not that easy to find anymore. Most manufacturers have replaced shellac with acrylic polymer, which has its advantages but is simply not as beautiful as shellac resin.

We stopped selling that early ink recipe a couple years later, but ever since, we've been researching and refining—not to mention, we added a powerful three-roll mill to disperse our pigments with total consistency. Finally, we're experiencing the magic of shellac ink again (I think it smells really nice, even if you remember that it's made by bugs). But now, we also have the technology and experience to make it a consistent option for serious artists. We hope this elemental material improves your flow.

More Info

We offer this Optimist color in a 50 mL Precision Bottle, which is squeezable and can dispense a drop or a full stream.

Conforms to ASTM D-4236. Made in the United States.