Delta Yellow

[Dumatborlon]

[TL;DR: Too bright to be of much use; difficult/awful performance on most papers; very nice hue; I am ambivalent about it.]

Here’s another yellow ink, maybe the purest yellow ink there is. I’m talking about ‘Delta Yellow’, of course. Before I start talking, let’s have a quick look at it:

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGr+sk;%E2%98%89;summaprada;jpeg-01136.jpeg

Boy, this ink is BRIGHT! ‘Which glasses do I need to read YELLOW?’, my middle school teacher used to sigh in exasperation whenever someone wrote in yellow crayon (yes, some of us thought it was a good idea at that time―and to be host, just that sigh alone was worth it ^^). After so much time, I finally get what he meant: This ink is all but illegible. No matter what paper you’re using, it is so bright that you have to get real close to the page to be able to decipher what’s written there. From more than a few inches away, all you see are yellow scribbles. The scans and the photograph are lying: The markings all but glow on the page, which of course cannot be conveyed by an image. The ink is much brighter I.R.L. than on both of the images. And I thought that scanning ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ was difficult…

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGq+sk;%E2%99%84;summaprada;ppm-00013.jpeg

The colour is the essence of yellowness. The colour does not lean to either green nor orange, as most yellows tend to do. It’s a very pure, primary yellow. This at least becomes quite clear from the scans. Because of this, the colour is practically meant to be paired to other primary colours. You might have noticed that I like to colour-code whatever I am writing. The other two colours on the scan are Parker Quink royal blue (washable) and Montblanc rouge. I think Waterman red would work even better alongside this yellow. But as already said: This ink really pairs well, also with more difficult colours like Noodler’s Polar brown, but see for yourself:

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGr+sk;%E2%98%89;summaprada;ppm-00015.jpeg

Other than that, it’s a very difficult ink. I’ve used it in an Online ‘College’ pen with a medium, which probably was one of the worst choices that I could make, but that was the pen that just happened to need refilling. In hindsight, I should have known: That particular pen is prone to skipping and poor flow, the only ink that really worked with it so far was Montblanc rouge (you can still see the stains of that colour in the photographs). In my opinion, this colour really needs the wettest-flowing pen with the broadest nib that you can find. As soon as the current charge in my Safari is used up, I’ll redo the review with that one, that will be a fairer comparison. The more technical stuff will be somewhat biased because of this.

Well, at least in this pen, the ink is extremely dry and just a pain to write with. If it starts up at all, it almost requires force to keep a flow going and is almost as if writing with a ballpoint pen. A day later, presumably as the feed is now finally saturated or whatever, the situation has somewhat improved. Given the right paper, it writes much more wetly. As long as the line is still drying, you can even see what you are writing. After that, you almost need special equipment, see below. )

Don’t use absorbent paper with this ink! It will make you really hate it. This ink is meant for good paper, which unfortunately I don’t have. Yet. Surprisingly enough, the University-issued notepads perform reasonably well with this ink. But with crappier paper, this ink will bite you. Seriously, don’t do it!

Surprisingly enough, the ink does seem to shade to some degree. It is so bright that it’s really difficult to tell; since the colour on the scan is a little darker than on paper, one can see some shading, especially on the high-resolution scan. On the plus side, there does not seem to be any feathering. There is some bleedthrough, though. But it’s yellow, so it’s unlikely to be as annoying as with, say, a brown ink.

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGq+sk;%E2%99%84;summaprada;ppm-00014.jpeg

Here’s another close-up of the shading, done on somewhat glossy paper:

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGr+sk;%E2%98%89;summaprada;ppm-00022b.jpeg

As usual, the hand-written review is on a Steinbeis Classic White recycling paper, which is a poor choice. That paper is almost off-white (which is what I like about it), but of course that makes the already poor contrast even poorer. If I had some bright-white paper, I’d compare to that. On the recycling paper, the scribbles are all but illegible.

Don’t even consider using a tinted paper. The ink is not very saturated and all but vanishes on brown, orange, red and green paper. On deep blue, you can still see it, about as well as on white paper (which is to say: not very much). I’ve tried scanning that, but it’s pointleß.

As expected, there is no water resistance. An eight minute drop test removed all traces of the ink from the paper. On the up side, once dry it does not tend to smear. It dries rather quickly.

So what to make of it? As opposed to De Atramentis’s Mahatma Gandhi, which is dark enough to be actually used, Delta Giallo is so bright that it’s more of a novelty ink than anything else. It’s too bright and unsaturated for use as a highlighting ink, and way too bright for headlines. It does not light up in blacklight; in fact, it remains invisible even there. Curiously, on the photograph that I took, the yellow line went pitch black, see below. So maybe it will make a good semi-secret ink.

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGr+sk;%E2%98%89;summaprada;jpeg-01140.jpeg

Also, it looks to be just perfect for a demonstrator pen; it already looks very nice in the semi-transparent grip section of my ‘College’ pen, but it should look absolutely gorgeous in a fully transparent pen.

In conclusion, I certainly like the colour. As already said: It’s the essence of yellowness, a very nice colour. But I can’t see any good way to use it. I will try to use it in a more properly behaved pen and see if that changes anything, but until then I don’t think I will keep using this ink.

I still have half a vial left, so if anyone wants to see the ink on paper, just drop me your address and I’ll send you a postcard or something. It’d be a funny experiment to write the address itself in this colour, but I have a feeling that the postman will hunt and murder me if I do so. ;o)

Thanks for making it this far; I know I always write too much. ^^

Zefon

Edit: Shading close-up

Edited July 27, 2014 by Dumatborlon

[visvamitra]

Crazy

[conib]

Thanks Zefon for posting this review! I'm currently setting up some mixes for spring/summer greens and this is one of the yellows. It's good to know that Delta Yellow is a dry ink.

 

(Thanks also for posting those color combos -- nice idea. And it was interesting to see the shading in your Monteverde Turquoise sample -- I'm going to have to order a sample of that.)

 

-- Constance

[Dumatborlon]

With all the writing that I’ve been doing over the weekend, I managed to write my Safari dry much earlier than anticipated. As already promised above, I wanted to try the ink in a wetter and ‘easier’ pen before closing.

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGs+sk;%E2%98%BD;summaprada;ppm-00041.jpeg

Redoing the whole review is pointless. The main points stay the same, but just as I imagined, a broader nib in a wetter pen works much better with this particular ink. It still stays on the dry side and is prone to skipping and start-up trouble on suboptimal paper, but once I found the right combination, I actually managed to write with it now. I still can barely read what I’ve written, so please excuse any mistakes that I might have made. ;o)

This sample is with a Lamy Safari and a medium nib, which tends to write rather wetly. At least on my recycled paper and on the university-issued notebooks, I get a decent flow going. If you actually manage to read any of what is written on the scan, your eyesight is much better than mine. ;o)

Updated verdict: I still can’t find much use for this colour, it’s just too bright for writing. Which is a shame, as the colour is rather nice and works really well with other colours, once you find a pen/paper combination that works with it.

[Dumatborlon]

(Thanks also for posting those color combos -- nice idea. And it was interesting to see the shading in your Monteverde Turquoise sample -- I'm going to have to order a sample of that.)

Here’s another sample of the turquoise:

 

http://null.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/5EGs+sk;%E2%98%BD;summaprada;ppm-00043.jpeg

 

It’s a little bit darker on the paper than on the scan, but not by much. I love the colour; heartily recommended! )

 

Zefon

[GTOZack]

my eye hurt.

[amberleadavis]

This would probably be a great mixing ink.

[Dumatborlon]

Quick colour comparison chart. This’ll update itself as I get more inks.

http://chiffre.aleturo.com/Dumatborlon/Colour-comparison/yellow.jpeg