Oriental High Quality Blue Ink 奧林丹高級純藍墨水

January 3, 2009

Oriental (奧林丹) makes ink, staples, paper clips, vermilion paste, fax paper, scissors, glue, and other such office necessities. This is a review of their blue ink, which they call 高級純藍墨水 or High Quality Blue Ink. It says so on the label. They also have red, blue-black, black, and a carbon black.

I bought the blue in a Los Angeles book store called 書原 or Soyodo Books (which is not a romanization of its Chinese name) for about $0.50. One bottle is 50mL.

Their blue ink is slightly cyan, says my scanner (Fully saturated, hex is 001083.) , but to my eyes in comparison to other inks such as Private Reserve American Blue, it looks a bit purple. It's slightly dry. I like my blue wet and leaning quite a bit toward cyan, so I don't really like this ink. Look at the scans.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2nqh6ko.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/348krig.png

Shading is minimal, even with bigger nibs. Water resistance is also minimal. One can say that it leaves legible remains if it is dipped for a few minutes, but it would probably wash off if left longer.

Edited January 3, 2009 by Renzhe