I haven't written a review out and probably won't get to it for a couple of days, but I made a comparison sheet of my browns to pin up on my studio wall. Figured someone here might like to see the inks next to one another.

As usual, don't trust the scan. On my LCD screen (which has never been calibrated) the colors look pretty true, but there's no telling what the scan looks like on someone else's screen. However, while not showing the colors absolutely, it should show them accurately in a relative sense. If you have one of these inks, you should be able to make an educated guess what they'll look like in real life.

Enjoy!
Click to view attachment

Thanks Splicer. I'll add these to the index (I am going to put in a couple of hours updating this week).

Chris

Thanks for the comparison photo. The ink comparisons and scans have been moved around by the mods, so it took me a while to find this.

I love brown inks and what I will call "browish sepias." I would like to see Pelikan's Brilliant Brown (or just "Brown" these days, I guess) in the mix. With its orange tones, I suppose it would be between the Sailor and the Private Reserve. It goes to show how many variants there can be in a color.

I like the top four. I'm surprised that the Herbin came out looking so dark. Is it really that way in daily writing? Waterman is my normal brown, with Omas and Visconti as second and third choices. I want to try Walnut.

Nice comparison - what pen did you use?

Thanks. I'm liking the look of the Omas Sepia.

Enjoyed my visit to your website, too.

Yes and no. Everything is relative, and at its darkest it's still lighter than Walnut. But also, look at the variation in the tones. My hatching strokes are pretty sloppy, and you can see how much more there is at the end of the downstrokes (or upstrokes in the case of Omas Sepia in this sample). See how much lighter Lie de Thé is at the top of the stroke than at the bottom? Also in the brush swash, see how much darker the right side is than the left? Some inks lay down very evenly, Lie de Thé less so. That's not a fault of the ink; I prefer to think of it as an attribute. Sometimes you want your writing to have more variation in the lights and darks. Sometimes even lines are preferable.

Walnut is probably the best daily writer in the bunch. With the exception of fields where there's a legal requirement for blue or black, Walnut could be used in regular business correspondence. Currently it's out of rotation in my pens, but only because I've recently procured several brown inks that I'm trying out. I'm sure it will find its way back into rotation soon.

I used a Rotring ArtPen Millennium Edition 1999 with an M nib, and I dipped rather than filled it to be easier to clean. For the swashes I used a 00000 sable drawing brush.

I try to use all the same tools when I compare inks, but sometimes I dip a Rotring New Orleans (M) instead. I don't keep the ArtPens at home.

Slicer,
Great comparisons! I have been wnating to see some browns side by side!
PMS

Ta for the comparison mate. Havana Brown always looks nice in every review I see.

I've been on a Herbin kick as of late, and this is a common thread among the Herbin inks. Many of them pool around like this. Vert Pre is the most fun in that aspect, you watch it move around on the page like it's alive, like mercury dropped from a broken thermometer! Lie de The is similar, but less active.

I am really liking Lie de The. In my m400 Fine nib, which is somewhat wet, it is a fairly dark ink on the Moleskine I usually write in. I rather like the look, which retains some shading and isn't as stark as a black. The color on the creamy Moleskine really looks nice.

Thanks for the comparison sheet, I will refer back if I get bored and want another brown.