Lennon Tool Bar Let's gon a trip Vol #1 Outback Forest — 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A deep, muted forest green with a grey-olive cast, sitting close to black where it pools. Retailers describe it as a green inspired by Aowanda, one calling it a deep lichen green — my swatches agree with that reading, but note the ink writes considerably darker and cooler than the soft sage-green bottle and box artwork suggests. The written line is a touch lighter and more olive than the heavy swabs.

Shading: Strong. The dip-pen bar moves from a mid olive-green through to near-black, and the muddler swabs show the same range pooling out to very dark edges. This is one of the ink's headline features.

Sheen: None seen on my swatches.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Medium.

The interesting bit: Lennon Tool Bar is a Taiwanese maker founded in 2014 in Tamsui, originally working in indigo dyeing before moving into inks. Outback Forest comes from the 2022 autumn "Let's Go on A Trip" set, four colours drawn from Aowanda and the Matsu Islands. The Chinese name 奧林 is a neat piece of wordplay: 奧 is borrowed from 奧萬大 (Aowanda, the national forest recreation area in Nantou) and 林 simply means forest. Aowanda sits in mountains folded up by Taiwan's earthquakes, which gives it a climate unlike the rest of the island — it's the place where the maples actually turn red in autumn. The brand's note on the colour is that the dense forest stays put through whatever the weather does, only dimming slightly as the year turns.

This is a hand-decanted 4ml sample vial from my own bottle.

Photos are my own swatches on Tomoe River Paper.

I'm a collector and I'm always happy to talk ink, so please message me if you have any questions.