Teriyaki

August 30, 2012

I have mixed a lot of inks for myself, but they've all been for dip pens, so mostly Winsor & Newton drawing inks, Higgins calligraphy inks, and the like. This is my first foray into mixing fountain-pen ink. I know how black tends to overwhelm yellow and make it greenish, so I started with 100 drops of Apache Sunset and then gradually added the Red-Black: first five drops, then five more, and then ten at a time. I needn't have worried: the orange of AS and the red of R-B made sure that the result was brown, not green. Fifty drops into a hundred seemed like the perfect colour: any more and it would have gotten too dark, I think (plus a 2:1 ratio is easy to mix).

The scanned colour is a pretty accurate representation of what I got, at least on my monitor. (The schmutz is on the scanner glass, not the paper, which is pristine.) It's a really appealing foody brown, reminiscent of caramel or coffee or teriyaki sauce, hence its name.

'Teriyaki' on Fabriano A5 dot paper in a Manuscript medium italic nib composed of 2 parts Noodler's Apache Sunset, 1 part Noodler's Red-Black

Drying time: 15 seconds

Flow: excellent

Feathering: none on any paper I've tried

Bleed-through: none

Water resistance: the yellow & red wash away quickly, leaving a pale but readable grey-brown

Shading: well, just look at it!

A couple of weeks ago I bought my first two Noodler's inks, and it was only a matter of time before I'd think of mixing them. As much as I love Apache Sunset, I think this blend is the best of both: dryer and lighter than the hard-to-control Red-Black, deeper and shadier and more readable than the otherwise gorgeous Apache Sunset. I didn't even know I needed an ink the colour of soy sauce, but I expect to get a lot of use out of this mix.

Edited August 30, 2012 by pyramus

August 30, 2012

Not what I would personally call soy sauce color (at least not double black) ....

I must say, though, that this is a really lovely color. And lovely handwriting, to boot.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

August 30, 2012

In the bottle, swirled around so it coats the sides, it really does bear a strong resemblance to soy sauce — a bit more orange, perhaps, but still pretty convincing. And I suspect that if you put soy sauce in a pen, it might write something like this. Not that I intend to try the experiment.

August 30, 2012

Huh, I managed to mix Apache Sunset with Diamine Sunset and Amber with a drop of black ink in my Lamy converter and get a brown really similar to yours but with orange shades.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Mt.Roll

August 30, 2012

In the bottle, swirled around so it coats the sides, it really does bear a strong resemblance to soy sauce — a bit more orange, perhaps, but still pretty convincing. And I suspect that if you put soy sauce in a pen, it might write something like this. Not that I intend to try the experiment.

Well, like I said -- there's soy sauce and then there's soy sauce....

Personally, I think it looks more like the color of hoisin sauce. Not a bad thing, of course (wow, now I want some moo shu....).

Anyway, it's a terrific color, really gorgeous. Of course, now you're making me want to add R-B to my next ink order, to mix it with the rest of my sample of Apache Sunset (like I *really* need more inks at the moment... ).