My wife needs a smear-proof black ink for calligraphy. The pens are medium to very broad: an M400 Mottishaw crisp italic M and Pilot Parallels. The paper is greeting cards -- good quality but not quite as smooth as Clairfontaine and a bit more absorbent.

The property she is looking for is resistance to smearing after it has dried if a hand drags across the page. The hand may be somewhat sweaty.

The smear-proofness of acrylic ink in a dip pen is excellent but FPs are much more convenient. And dip pens are unpleasant to use while FPs are joyful and Parallels transcendental.

Try Aurora Black. It's not waterproof, but is well saturated (but not so saturated as to smear, like Noodlers blacks).

If the paper is absorbent enough, Noodler's Black may work, and the writing will be bulletproof in addition to non-smearing. Absorbency is key. Any water-based ink will smear if the dye isn't fully absorbed by the paper (which is an argument for using less-saturated inks with less-absorbent papers).


Transcendental, eh? Well, many (e.g., Taliesen's Muse in this post) would seem to agree with you. With regard to ink, though, at least one vendor's website says that the ink that's bundled with the Parallel is "specially formulated". I wonder what that means, and whether there's any disadvantage to using ordinary FP inks with this pen.

I should have mentioned in the original post: we've tried Noodler's black and it smears a lot. Confirmed not suitable.

We even tried Diamine Registrar's but we're nervous about its effect on pens and it's not an ideal color anyhow. It's amazing to watch someone writing with it, though.

It's probably true. Parallel Pen ink carts comes with stern warnings not to use them in any other kind of pen. And when you use their black it it quite something -- a 3.8 mm-wide line, super-dense and uniform with crisp edges -- just like this: woosh!

But it smears pretty good.

Skrip Black

+ 1 for Skrip Black (old and new formulae) for not smearing after drying. Also the other pen-manufacturer-brand black inks (Waterman, Parker Quink, Montblanc, Pilot/Namiki, Sailor, A T Cross / Pelikan) and Diamine Black (not Quartz Black).

I recommend Noodler's Black, I have yet to have it smear on me.

I'm one to say that across all forms of papers, there is no such thing as smear proof ink.

But for specific makes of paper, there are inks that don't smear.