Breakdown Of Ink Colors?

[chromantic]

The "how many inks" thread got me to thinking about the actual breakdown of the colors we have. It's only natural that even those of us with (relatively) few inks have our favorite colors, so that if we may have only 1 of this and 1 of that, we do have 3 or 4 of this color. (I know some are hard to classify - is Oxblood red or brown, is Lamy Coral orange or pink.)

 

For myself, the 19 inks I currently have: 4 browns, 3 reds (incl. Oxblood), 3 blues, 2 each of green, black, purple and orange (incl. Coral) and 1 pink.

 

edit: I forgot to say that this question is geared towards "what is your favorite color", as shown by a preponderance of any one color (an "I have 100 inks but 80 of them are blues" type of thing). Also, not really looking for specific numbers; I only listed mine because I have just a few. My favorite is brown apparently.

Edited May 24, 2016 by chromantic

[Pensei]

I think it's an interesting conversation starter. I'm always on the quest for the perfect blue. I have fairly high interest in grays and purples, some interest in browns and oranges, a very few greens, and that's about it. But that's plenty.

 

To answer your question numerically as you suggest, I think at least 80% of my inks are some variety of blue.

 

This could get complicated if we went all color-wheel about it, as the dividing lines become very disputable.

[chingdamosaic]

I find it hard to answer this question, as my definition/naming for colors are usually different from most people's, and given the fact that English isn't my first language.

Also, I tend to fall for those inks whose colors are hard to describe, i.e. Cacao du Bresil, Rikyu-cha, Scabiosa, Diamine Autumn oak, etc.

Edited May 24, 2016 by chingdamosaic

[AD64]

It's a great question, Chromantic. I had the same thought myself about where we each might cluster on the color wheel.

 

I have one black, two browns, and about eight reds that are in rotation. I have a couple blue-black samples that I like in theory (aka in the bottle), but I don't really enjoy the writing experience with it although it is useful in terms of the way I sometimes use it (for signatures, underlinings, headings).

 

I have three Pilot Petit1 pens that I transformed into eyedroppers with document ink, thus confirming my color wheel: black, brown, and red.

 

Yet, it's really all about the reds.

[keo]

Sorting my inks by "color names if you're a guy...", it appears my favorite color is blue, and it remains blue even if I break out blue-black as a separate color. My "real" favorite color is actually grey, and I like Noodler's Lexington Grey enough that I don't need to go chasing other variations of that color. I also like green (preferably dark/murky) more than I like blue, though I have less bottles of it. Hmmm, does this mean I should buy a few more bottles of green, so that my bottles match my preferences?

 

When you say, "My favorite is brown apparently.", does that mean your favorite actually _isn't_ brown?

 

http://www.bagofnothing.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Capturecolornamewheeldsfa.png

[Ileach]

So I am the purist in here. As mentioned yesterday I only have one color and that's Diamine Midnight. But i have two bottles of it - in case I run dry. Usually I tend to blue-black inks but I already think about a blue one which could be my next ink. Two desks, two pens, enough for me.

[chromantic]

^ Pensei - Yes, I originally had something about 'blues encompassing blues, blurples and turqs' and 'light and dark greens' but editing left just the bit about Oxblood and Coral

 

^ keo, First off, what a great color chart! As for the browns, if you asked me what my favorite color is, I'd most likely say red so it's curious that in spending $ to buy ink I've bought more browns than other colors (and I have another one on the way); that it's easier to justify buying one more brown (over one more of another color) must mean something, I figure.

[AD64]

it was a bad joke, poorly done. So I deleted it.

Edited May 24, 2016 by AD64

[DrDebG]

Keo- love the chart!

 

Hmm, let me see. I probably have 3 bluish turquoisy greens, and 3 light sea foam blues, and 4 deep sea blues, and 2 azures, 2 columbine blues, 2 ultramarines, 1 iris, 1 orchid, 1 cassia, 2 violets - and that is just the blues and purples. I won't bore you with the rest.

 

Any guess what my favorite color is?

Edited May 24, 2016 by DrPenfection

[Pravda]

How curious this 'subject' has been on my mind lately. I usually have 13 pens inked and I always try to keep a balance between my color groups, i.e see how many blues vs reds vs greens vs blacks to grey vs browns

 

For example:

 

Montblanc Mystery Black

Montblanc Permanent Grey

 

Montblanc Diamond SE

Montblanc Midnight Blue

 

Montblanc Burgundy Red

Montblanc Leonardo DaVinci SE

Montblanc Toffee Brown

Herbin Terre de Feu

Herbin Rouille d'Ancre

 

Herbin Irish Green

Montblanc Daniel Defoe

 

Conclusion: Not enough blues :/

[inkstainedruth]

Being the somewhat OCD sort of person I am, I have a file on my laptop listing inks I have (noting whether I have full bottles of them or not) which are sorted by color. I have more light/medium and dark blues than anything else except for blue-black and black (and a lot of the black inks are samples I haven't tried -- either they're samples for a test I was conducting a couple of years ago, or things like swag from pen shows).

Following that, there are a lot of purple inks (but only 3 that I would classify as "mauve"), followed by brown (sepia is its own category). The smallest categories that actually have inks listed are "orange" and "yellow orange" with 1 ink each (there are none listed for "yellow") followed by "yellow/gold" (2 inks) and "white" (2 inks, but one of those is actually Noodler's Blue Ghost invisible ink).

Mind you, there are inks I haven't actually tried yet on the list, so they haven't necessarily been categorized. And I separate "burgundy" from "red-violet" and from "mauve"; and "blue-violet/indigo" from both "dark blue" and "purple" (as well as from "blue-black").

YMMV

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Pensei]

I guess when it comes to color, I'm a girl. That's OK.

[justaninker]

I guess when it comes to color, I'm a girl. That's OK.

I think that picture should say girl/ink connoisseur I believe it's all about interest and experience, girls become color-sensitized because of makeup: if you can only recognize 7 colors, it's hard to use (and come up with the excuse to buy) a 256-color eye makeup palette!

[amberleadavis]

Sorting my inks by "color names if you're a guy...", it appears my favorite color is blue, and it remains blue even if I break out blue-black as a separate color. My "real" favorite color is actually grey, and I like Noodler's Lexington Grey enough that I don't need to go chasing other variations of that color. I also like green (preferably dark/murky) more than I like blue, though I have less bottles of it. Hmmm, does this mean I should buy a few more bottles of green, so that my bottles match my preferences?

 

When you say, "My favorite is brown apparently.", does that mean your favorite actually _isn't_ brown?

 

http://www.bagofnothing.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Capturecolornamewheeldsfa.png

 

This is too funny.

[majolo]

Can't resist sharing the inevitable rejoinder to that chart with actual data: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

 

And on-topic, I seem to have about a third of my inks in the blue to blue-black range. Next after that might be grey-greens if that makes sense as a category, but I seem overall to have a lot more variety than I expected.

[dcwaites]

[praxim]

The preponderance of my colours (current and about to be purchased) are around greens although more things are not green than green. More interesting to me was that a large majority of my colour selections are dark within their colour range, even though I eschew black and blue-black.

[TheGreatRoe]

[clazbill]

A few weeks ago I stopped to think about what ink colors I have. I felt that I had a good spread of colors, but probably was a bit short on the blues.

After counting - about 1/3 of my 20-odd bottles are in the blue range range. Huh. I guess I have a good selection, but haven't found The One True Blue yet. I do have a few black inks, and a bottle to cover most other colors. I am lacking green, orange, and pink options though.

[NinthSphere]

If my count is correct, I have 22 bottles. 9 are some variety of blue, 4 are purples, 3 span the yellow to orange range, 2 are red, 2 are green, 1 is brown, & 1 is black. Hard to tell, but I might have a thing for blues.