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  1. namrehsnoom

    Wearingeul Lost (Demian)

    Wearingeul – Lost (Demian) I’m sure I have more than enough inks already, but sometimes an opportunity rises to explore a new brand that wasn’t on my radar before. Some time ago Scrittura Elegante – a stationery shop from the Netherlands – announced that they would stop their business. Definitely a sad thing: this lovely little webshop carried some interesting and lesser-known brands, with Wearingeul being one of them. They started a sale to empty the warehouse, and I took this opportunity to place a last order, loading up on couple of Wearingeul inks. Wearingeul is a stationery brand from South Korea, that gets its inspiration from arts & literature. In their own words: “We re-interpret novels and poetry with colors. You can find characteristic inks with stories and also notes/papers which are suitable for ink users.” Lost is inspired by Hermann Hesse’s book “Demian” (1919). Between the years 1916 and 1917, Hesse went through a personal crisis as a result of illness and death in the family. His personal distress led him to seek psycho-analysis with both Carl Yung and his student J.B. Lang. The novel Demian is based on his process of self-discovery through psycho-analysis. The psychological changes and conflicts that the main character experiences in the process of “finding himself” are expressed as the ink dries and the colour changes. This is the second Wearingeul ink I tried, and again I was completely knocked off my socks by the ink’s colour. What a beauty! The colour is a pale sea-blue with a muted and toned-down feel to it, that looks absolutely georgeous on pure white paper. When heavily saturated a mysterious yellow undertone comes to the surface, adding some extra eye-candy. Totally fits my taste! But Lost is also a difficult and stubborn ink, that will not always play along with your pens and paper. The ink is too pale for fine nibs and/or dry pens and is not too friendly for lower quality paper. But when the circumstances are just right, the ink delivers beautifully and is an aesthetic marvel. Wearingeul Lost writes very light but is still quite readable. On white paper, the result is soft and restful – a pleasure for the eye. But the ink definitely has its sweet spot: a wet pen, white and good-quality paper, and preferably a wider nib (M or above). The ink doesn’t look good on creamy paper – the yellow tones of such paper don’t combine well with the pale blue colour, and the result is a more or less sickly-looking blue – not pleasant at all. The ink also writes with fairly low lubrication in dry pens (like the Safari) and is therefore best paired with wet writers. To illustrate the colour span of this Wearingeul ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Lost (Demian) shows a very wide saturation range, from a wispy light-blue up to a moderately saturated sea-blue with yellow undertones coming to the surface. Due to this wide contrast range, the ink is a fairly strong shader. Dry pens favour the left side of the saturation range, where the ink is too pale to be useful. Wetter pens explore the right side where the ink looks superb and shows great aesthetics. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved perfectly. There is no visible smearing at all. Water resistance is also remarkably good. The colour fades away, but a pale grey-blue ghost of your writing remains that is still readable without too much trouble. The chroma also clearly shows the yellow undertones hiding within the ink’s composition. Nice! I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with an F-nibbed Wancher Dream Pen Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier with 1.1 nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Lost writes scratchy in my Safari pens with bad lubrication. It really needs wet writers. Due to the ink’s paleness, it works best with wet pens and/or broader nibs. This Wearingeul ink also tolerates only the higher quality papers – otherwise you will get visible feathering, combined with see-through and bleed-through. And it’s best not to use it on cream-coloured paper: the result is guaranteed to disappoint - a sickly-looking pale blue. On pure white paper on the other hand, this Wearingeul ink truly is a feast for your eyes. Like I hinted at before: a quirky ink that you need to get acquainted with, and that only shines in its goldilocks zone. I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. In scans, the contrast gets blown up, and looks totally unrealistic – see the scan below. My scanner really messed this one up! Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. Unfortunately for me, Lost doesn’t seem to like my Paperblanks journal, exhibiting quite some visible feathering. Damn! Writing with different nib sizes The photo below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). The initial lines were written with Lamy Safaris. Wearingeul Lost is not an ink for these dry Safari pens – only the B-nib was more or less ok. But the ink really shines with the wet-writing Wancher Dream Pen and the Edison Collier stub. It takes some time and effort to find the perfect pairing, but it’s definitely worth it: the end result looks wonderful – a soft, pastel-toned, pale sea-blue that is a feast for the eye. Related inks To compare this Wearingeul Lost with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Lost stands on its own in my ink collection. A close cousin is kyo-no-oto hisoku, which is also soft & pale, but more green-leaning. Inkxperiment – The Fall of Trantor As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. I really enjoy the couple of hours I spend on these monochrome mini-paintings – experimenting with the ink to see all the shades that can be extracted from it. This is number two in my “geometry 101” series, this time with the focus on triangles. Inspiration for the drawing comes from the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov – now also an Apple TV+ series that I’m binge-watching. On the right side sits Hari Seldon’s Vault on the planet Terminus. Top-left is a representation of the Prime Radiant, a multi-dimensional data storage device containing all of Hari Seldon's psychohistorical calculations on the fall of the Galactic Empire. This fall is symbolized by the collapse of Trantor’s Star Bridge, a space elevator linking the surface to a boarding station in geo-stationary orbit around the planet. I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I drew in the background with cotton swabs dipped in heavily water-diluted ink. I then painted in the triangles representing the different elements of the “Fall of Trantor” story, using self-made stamps. I finally added some accents with a fountain pen and pure ink. The resulting picture shows what can be achieved with this Wearingeul ink in a more artistic context. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I started by using a “warm” photo filter, and then used an “antique paper” filter to get a more grey-looking colour. For my “Geometry 101” series I want to use square formats. So I squeezed the end result to a square shape – and since I only used triangles in the drawing, the distortion resulting from the squeeze forms no problem at all … squeezed triangles remain triangles. Conclusion Wearingeul Lost is a stunning ink – a soft pale-blue that simply looks wonderful on good-quality white paper. But it’s also a difficult ink with a narrow goldilocks zone: you need exactly the right combination of pen, nib and paper to extract that beautiful pale sea-blue in all its glory. It makes you totally forget the dark side of this ink – bad lubrication, sick-looking on yellow paper… All is forgiven once you hit that exact goldilocks spot. I personally love this ink, but can absolutely imagine that it’s not for everyone. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types
  2. Being a bit of a Montblanc fan, wanting to add a blue or blue/grey variant, and wanting to add more to the MB herd, I found a few potential candidates. Glacier La Petit Prince Skywalker Cool Blue Guilloche Starwalker Space Blue I have other LeGrand/146 pens and have never owned or experienced any of the Skywalkers. I believe one of the 146 sized pens has a fine nib, others are medium and a broad 146. I have fines, mediums and broads from MB already also. Getting the Glacier or Prince would be more or less for aesthetic purposes over having a new writing experience. Getting one of the Skywalkers would give me a different writing experience to add to the other 9 MB pens I have. In the end, I like how all of my Montblanc pens write and enjoy having a variety depending on my mood or whim. What I would ultimately like, however, would be to get BBB nibs and have a nibmeister grind them to my specifications. But finding BBB nibs are rare. In the meantime I can enjoy having a set of fun pens. Of the four, the most eye catching, to me, is the Cool Blue Guilloche. That said, I also like the blue/grey color of the others. Each one have an appeal. I do not want all four. I'd rather pick one and move on to a completely new version to bring into the family. Possibly a Patron of Art sometime down the road? Who knows? Montblanc has a vast catalogue to choose from. Plus I'm still awaiting the 100th Anniversary of the Meisterstuck to be announced. Exclusion of price, which of the four would you choose?
  3. Baka1969

    Back to Basics?

    Hi everyone, Is anyone else getting more practical with their ink choices? Although I have dozens of ink options, brands, and colors I find myself wanting to ink more with blues, blacks, greens and useable colors over the more whimsical colors like pinks, purples, reds, yellows or oranges. Don't get me wrong, I still love and use a sheen or shade (no shimmers). I just find myself wanting more suitable ink colors for day-to-day usage. Is it just me? My favorite inks to fill pens with recently are Organic Studios Nitrogen, Noodler's Heart of Darkness, Monblanc Irish Green, Diamine Salamander and Diamine Majestic Blue. I also have a Lamy Studio with a fine 14k nib filled with Baystate Blue that I use regularly. I have other pens filled with reds, browns and the purple/pinks, however, they rarely get used and I find aren't practical for everyday writing. I also happen to like Diamine Wagner that my Bordeaux LeGrand is inked with. It's a yellow-ish light/medium green (think olive) and I'd love to find more times to use it. Am I going nuts to want to resort to more basic colored inks? Like I mentioned above, I still use inks with sheen and I really like to see shading. Yet, when it come to colors and situations, the blues, blacks and greens are what I'm reaching for over the (to me) much less useful colors. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Claret and Apache Sunset. Who doesn't like a bit of Imperial Purple or a ribbon of Honey Blast? I just can't find a daily use for them. Sure, I can use them when I do some of my transcribing. But I don't feel the color when I'm doing so. A color switch would be more of a function of a change for the sake of the change. How do I make a color fit what I'm doing? Even if it's just the few times I write for pleasure. What do you think? Where are you at? Has anyone else here moved to more practical ink colors? Happy Holidays
  4. namrehsnoom

    TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri

    TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that - as far as I know - is now part of the Nakabayashi group. They offer high-quality fountain pens, inks, pen-rolls, notebooks, etc. More specifically, TACCIA produce a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e prints from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1867). Ukiyo-e paintings are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers, and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well. In this review, the spotlight shines on ruri, a colour that I can only describe as a dark and saturated light-blue 😉. I know – that doesn’t make much sense, but that’s what I feel you get. The ink has the softness, fragility, tenderness of a light-blue – but at the same time it is quite saturated and can get fairly dark. A really nice ink colour with a lot of depth to it. The ink’s inspiration comes from a woodprint design by the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige, more specifically from his first print “Sunny Morning after Snow at Nihonbashi Bridge” (1856) in the “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” series. The ink’s colour is derived from the different shades of blue appearing in the river. The print has a limited palette of bright blues and soft red, grey and brown. Particularly striking is the vivid ruri blue of the river and the sky, for which Hiroshige took advantage of the new European pigment Prussian blue. Although far from realistic, the colours evoke the crisp light of a bright winter’s morning. Ruri is an inspired vivid blue, wet and saturated, and with a complexity of dyes that really add depth to the colour. The ink shows little shading with fine nibs, but with M-nibs and above the shading is really prominent while still being aestetically pleasing. The darker parts of the ink show an impressive and beautiful red-purple sheen on the right type of paper (more specifically Japanese papers like Tomoe River, Kobeha GRAPHILO, Yamamoto bank paper). The ink writes really wet though, a bit too much for me in wet & broad-nibbed pens. The sweet spot for this ink is in the M-B-1.1 range with a dry-writing pen: great shading, and the vivid saturated blue looks particularly lovely. The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e painting. Lovely packaging for an excellent ink. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. TACCIA ruri has a narrow dynamic range, with limited contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to very gently but still prominently visible shading. With wet pens, the increased saturation tends to burn away most of the shading though. Dry writers lean towards the left side of the saturation range, showing that nicely saturated light-blue with excellent shading. The chromatography shows the complex nature of this ink: ruri mixes sky-blue and rose-pink dyes that magically combine to give us that elegant vivid blue. Lovely stuff! The bottom part of the chroma shows that most of the dyes detach from the paper when coming into contact with water. Not a water-resistant ink, as is confirmed by the water test at the end of this review. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a B-nib Platinum 3775 Century Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) This vivid and well-saturated blue ink can handle both white and cream-coloured paper. For me, it looks best on pure white paper, like the Clairefontaine Triomphe. The ink writes really wet, and as such requires high-quality paper. With cheap & absorbent paper, you get quite a bit of see-through and bleed-through. Surprisingly for such a wet-writing ink, drying times are fairly short with the M-nib Lamy Safari: 10-15 seconds on most paper types, climbing to 20-25 seconds for the hard-surface high-sheen papers. Technically, the ink is really good too: on crappy paper, you get only the tiniest amount of feathering – fairly impressive for such a wet ink. Even on Moleskine, the results are surprisingly good. For the sake of completeness, I also add a photo of text written on a number of different papers. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The ink’s saturation makes for a good contrast with the paper across all nib sizes. Shading is soft & gentle, almost undetectable in the finer nibs, but becoming truly stunning with the M-B-1.1 nibs. It really adds to the character of your writing. Beware that wet pens will shift the ink to the saturated portion of its dynamic range, where the shading is mostly burned away. The sweet spot for this ink are dry writers combined with broader nibs – great colour and lovely shading! Related inks To compare ruri with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Diamine Blue Velvet comes really close colour-wise, but lacks a bit of the depth & complexity that makes this ruri such a great-looking blue. Inkxperiment – Dark Side of the Moon With every review, I try to create an interesting drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small monochromatic paintings are an excellent way to show the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. And I totally enjoy the fun couple of hours these inkxperiments provide me. A couple of days ago, I had my favourite rock band’s album on the speakers: “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd. The first album I bought as a teenager, and still a musical highlight. I realized that this album got published in 1973 – making it 50 years old today. Unbelievable! The music sounds as fresh, compelling and mind-bending today as it did all these years ago. This is truly an all-time classic! No need to look any further for inspiration! For this drawing, I started with a piece of A4 HP photo paper. I started by taping out the iconic prism of the album’s cover art with washi tape. Next I drew the background, applying water-diluted ink through a kitchen towel. After removing the washi tape, I used a plastic card dipped in pure ink to draw the prism and the rays of light passing through it. I then added the psychedelic sound waves travelling across the soundscape. As a final touch, I added the iconic heartbeat from the intro/outro title tracks. The end result is my tribute to the 50th anniversary of this timeless classic. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. For this computational derivation, I started with applying a negative filter to the original drawing. I then used an urban art filter to lift out the main topic (prism and heartbeats) and place them on a gritty grey & black background. Next I used an ‘antique photo paper’ filter to age the colours and arrive at a more monochromatic look. I really like the end result that keeps the main topic of the painting, and makes for a great neutral-looking computer screen background. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri is a great-looking blue – vivid & saturated, while still keeping a soft, fragile and light apperarance with great depth & complexity. I really like the colour of this one, especially with what I consider its sweet spot: a dry writer with a broader nib, while using high-quality pure white paper. A really nice ink from TACCIA’s ink brewers. Recommended. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
  5. yazeh

    Noodler's Lermontov

    Mikhail Lermontov (1814 -1841) Russian poet, novelist. Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia. He came to prominence after Pushkin’s death, writing a poem in his memory, which landed him in hot water with the authorities and exiled him to the Caucuses. He wrote the first Russian psychological novel, A Hero of Our time. He himself, died in duel, at age 26. He was also a painter. Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia. His mother, from Russian nobility, died young and he was raised by his rich, doting grandmother, mostly in the Caucuses due to his fragile health. His grandmother made sure that he would have least contact with his father. It is no surprise with such an upbringing, and childhood traumas, the main character of his novel, is a narcissistic male, seduced women like Don Juan, but unlike the him was aware of his emptiness. I truly appreciated discovering this very astute and self-aware writer, and his many flaws. And the beauty of his poetry. Here is Sail, translated by Vladimir Nabakov. HP 32 - Paper - With modern flex nib Apparently, the word blue does not exist in Russian (If I'm wrong, hopefully Russian-speakers will correct me). They have words for dark/navy blue or light blue. The latter is used with much emphasis in the novel. Hence, why I assume, Mr. Tardiff, used this ice blue. It's a truly agreeable ink, very well behaved, that I used with much ease even on Hammermill 20 lb paper, with no apparent ghosting or bleed through. Chroma: Writing samples: Photo: Water resistance is quite good. In Noodler's vocabulary bulletproof means that if someone attempts forgery it'll be obvious as you can see on the left side of the image. Comparison: I was inspired by the last line of his poem Sail, to do this sketch: But you, wild rover, pray for tempests, As if in tempests there was peace! For the background I used Diamine Shimmering Seas (top), Kakimori Torori (orange yellow). The sky and sea are done with Lermontov, in diluted form. And the little sail boat, I used a dab of J Herbin's Larmes de cassis. Note how eerie it looks in under the UV light It's fluorescent ink) · Pens used: Pilot Elite (Ef/Stub) Lamy Safari (Ef/F/M/B), Kanwrite Ultraflex, · What I liked: It’s a pleasure to write with. It shines with Broad nib. · What I did not like,: it’s not an ink for all seasons. You wouldn’t want to use it in the dead of winter or on cold gloomy fall days. · What some might not like: The colour moves/changes when water touches it. · Shading: None. Unless you write on a modern shiny postal card. · Ghosting: Very well behaved. Even on copy paper. · Bleed through: None. · Flow Rate: Wet · Lubrication: Good. It’s slightly dry. · Nib Dry-out: None. · Start-up: None · Saturation: Medium. · Shading Potential: None. · Sheen: None. · Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: None · Nib Creep / “Crud”: Nope. · Staining (pen): No. · Clogging: No. · Cleaning: Easy. · Water resistance: Very good. The excess ink came off, but the rest was stable. · Availability: 3 oz/90 ml bottles, Russian Series is more expensive than the traditional line of Noodler’s. Please don't hesitate to share your experience, writing samples or any other comments. The more the merrier
  6. Diamine Tudor Blue (150th Anniversary II) The ink maker from Liverpool is one of the staple brands in ink-land. They consistently produce solid inks for a very reasonable price. In 2017, Diamine released a second ink series to commemorate their 150th Anniversary. I obtained my set shortly thereafter, but more or less forgot about them when my attention drifted to Japanese inks. About time to do the reviews. Fortunately, these anniversary inks are still easily obtainable, so if you like what you see you can still get them. At first sight, this Diamine ink looks like a fairly classic Royal Blue. On second sight, it definitely is a bit softer and darker, with a hint of purple undertones. For my personal taste though, it is too close to a standard blue to pique my interest. But it still is a solid performer, and a worthwhile workhorse ink. As can be expected from Diamine, the ink performs well, and writes a saturated line in all nib sizes. With F-nibs and above a fairly pronounced shading makes its appearance. Not too bad. The ink itself is fairly saturated. It can get quite a dark shade of blue when using wet pens. Also, wet pens tend to drown out the shading in this ink. I like it best in my drier pens – really nice in the Lamy Safari with 1.1 nib. Tudor Blue prefers good quality paper. On print/copy paper, I noticed a tiny bit of feathering (especially with a wet pen), and a fair amount of show-through and little points of bleed-through. Not an ink for the cheap copy paper in the workplace. To illustrate the colour span of this Diamine ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Tudor Blue has a rather low dynamic range, and quickly saturates. Dry pens tend to match with the left part of the saturation range – and you will get nice and soft shading. Wet pens match with the right side: here the ink is really saturated, with little difference between light and dark parts. So don’t expect much in the shading department with wet writers. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved well. There is smearing, but the text itself remains crips and clear. Water resistance is non-existent though. All the blue dyes quickly disappear, leaving only some red-purple smudges behind. This can easily be deduced from the bottom part of the chromatography below - almost no ink remains in place. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows Tudor Blue’s preference for good quality paper. With cheaper copy/print paper there is a tiny bit of feathering, and you also get lots of see-through and bits of bleed-through. It’s best to use this ink with high quality hard-surface paper – that’s the paper eco-system that it prefers. In my opinion, this is a white-paper ink. On cream paper it looks a bit sickly – the yellow shining through doesn’t combine well with the blue tones of the ink. Drying times for this ink are mostly in the 5-10 second range with a Lamy Safari M-nib. Because scans don't always capture an ink's colour and contrast with good precision, I also add a photo to give you an alternative look on this Diamine ink. In this case, the phote gives the closest match. The scans show too bright a blue, but still give you a good feel of the differences in behaviour across multiple types of paper. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a Pelikan M120 with M-nib, and an Edison Collier with 1.1. stub. I personally like this Tudor Blue best with the dry-writing Safari pens. Related inks To compare Diamine Tudor Blue with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. The ink is fairly similar to others in the grid – if you already have a blue in this range, there’s really no need to acquire this one. Inkxperiment – Singin' in the Rain As a personal challenge, I always try to draw an interesting little painting using only the ink I’m reviewing. This part of the review literally guarantees a moment of joy and creative challenge – I simply love exploring inks this way. A little while before doing this review I had a song that got stuck in my head. Everyone knows that silly tune from the 1952 musical “Singin’ in the Rain”, with Gene Kelly dancing through puddles on the street. I have no idea how that tune wormed its way into my head, but it definitely was annoying – a real earworm. Anyway… my inspiration for this inkxperiment is obvious now. I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I taped out the tree trunk with washi tape, and then used a sponge with water-diluted ink to draw in the background. Next I used a paintbrush to add the cloud and rain puddles on the ground. I then used the rough end of a kitchen sponge to stamp in the foliage on the tree. After removing the washi tape, I used a plastic card with pure Tudor Blue to draw the tree trunk. The mother and child were drawn in using my B-nib Safari. To finish the painting, I used a toothpick dipped in ink to draw the raindrops. The resulting drawing is not too bad composition-wise, but Tudor Blue did not really succeed to bring the drawing to life… there is not enough contrast, which makes the drawing a bit flat-looking. On the positive side, this little picture shows what can be achieved with this Diamine ink in a more artistic context (not much, I’m afraid 😉 Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I first used Irfanview with its Metallic Ice filter to create more or less a negative of the original drawing. Next, I used a PicsArt color filter to extend the colour range. A Photoleap Urban Art filter added the red & yellow tones – but I kept the blue in the umbrellas and tree trunk. I finally retouched the little girl to add more yellow to her dress. I like the thunderstorm atmosphere of the end result and the final colour palette that works quite well. Conclusion Diamine Tudor Blue is a fairly standard blue – a bit softer and darker than your run-of-the-mill royal blue. Not an exciting ink colour – my opinion of course. Not a bad ink, but also not a must-have. If you have other blues that are close, there’s no real reason to obtain this one. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types
  7. Astronymus

    petrol&petrol1.jpg

    From the album: Pens & Inks

    © astronymus.net


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  8. Astronymus

    petrol&petrol2.jpg

    From the album: Pens & Inks

    © astronymus.net


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  9. namrehsnoom

    TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hokusai koiai

    TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hokusai koiai TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that is part of the Nakabayashi group. They offer high-quality fountain pens, inks, pen-rolls, notebooks, etc. More specifically, TACCIA produce a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e paintings are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well. In this review, the spotlight is on koiai, a dark indigo blue with a heavy reddish-purple sheen. The colour is inspired by the blue tones in the world-famous painting “The Great Wave of Kanagawa”, painted by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). It is the best-known painting in his “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” series. The breathtaking composition of this woodblock print ensures its reputation as an icon of world art. Hokusai cleverly played with perspective to make Japan’s grandest mountain appear as a small triangular mound within the hollow of the cresting wave. Koiai is a wet and saturated ink, that can appear very dark in writing. It’s not a blue-black though, but a deep dark blue that is moving a bit towards teal territory - without actually getting there. This is an ink that I have mixed feelings about. In wet pens & fine nibs, the ink is too saturated for my taste, and the resulting very dark blue shade doesn’t do much for me. But use this ink with dry pens and/or stub nibs, and it truly blossoms, showing a wonderful indigo blue. You definitely need to hunt for the right pen/nib combination, but this extra bit of work is totally worth it. Koiai is also an ink with a fabulous reddish-purple sheen, that shows on many types of paper. Lovely! The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e painting. Lovely packaging for an excellent ink. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Koiai has a fairly narrow colour span, quickly moving from a stunning indigo-blue to a very saturated dark blue. Not a lot of shading in this ink, but instead you get lots of sheen in the saturated parts of the letter forms. This ink is a true sheening monster! This TACCIA ink works wonderfully well with my Edison Collier Nighthawk 1.1 stub – a beautiful indigo-blue, loads of sheen, and the pen’s colour matches the ink perfectly. I love it when all these details combine together for a wonderful experience… writer’s heaven! The ink’s chromatography shows a complex mix of dyes, with grey, purple, teal and sky-blue components in the mix. From the bottom part of the chroma you can deduce that all colour will disappear from the page when the ink comes into contact with water, leaving only a grey ghost of your writing. This is confirmed in the water test – colour washes away, with a grey-blue residue clinging to the paper, that remains quite readable. By no means a water-proof ink, but one that can survive a small accident. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Koiai looks good on both pure white and yellow-cream paper. The ink handles crappy paper well: on Moleskine I saw almost zero feathering, and even see-through and bleed-through are minimal. Drying time are quite long (15-25 seconds) on hard-surface paper, but on more absorbent paper the ink tends to dry almost immediately. This means you can use koiai as an office ink – I’ve used it in my Kaweco Liliput EDC pens with EF nib, and it worked perfectly on the lousy copy paper at work. I’ve also added a photo to give you another view on the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, the photo shows the ink a bit too dark, while the scans come closest to what my eyes can see. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The top lines are written with my dry-writing Lamy Safari test pens and show a nice dark blue. The ink starts to blossom when you reach the broader nib sizes (B and stub-nib). With my Lamy Dialog 3 – a wet writer with M-nib – the ink gets too saturated for my taste and loses a lot of its appeal. Koiai provides low-to-medium shading. What the scan totally fails to capture is the tremendous amount of sheen – this has to be seen to believe. Related inks To compare koiai with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. There are quite a number of similar-looking inks in my collection, so colourwise this koiai is not a must have. But that sheen… totally makes it worth it to own a bottle of this TACCIA brew. Inkxperiment – Romeo and Juliet With every review, I try to create a drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small one-ink pieces are an excellent way to show the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. And every inkxperiment provides me with a couple of fun hours of quality time. Inspiration for this inkxperiment comes from the “Wyrd Sisters” – a Terry Pratchett novel with lots of references to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear. But also, a love story between the young witch Magrat and the King’s Fool – one that made me think of Romeo and Juliet. The inkxperiment expresses Romeo’s desperation while trying to reach his Juliet. For this drawing, I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper. I divided the paper in square grids and used the age-old potato stamp (known from kindergarten times) to print a background of squares using different water/ink ratios. I then used a plastic card to add labyrinth lines to the drawing, and with a glass dip pen added Romeo and Juliet. Technically a really simple drawing, but I like the end result that gives you a good idea of what can be achieved with koiai as a drawing ink. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. I made a square cut-out of the inkxperiment drawing and used a metallic filter to convert the drawing to black & white. Looks great on a 75x75cm canvas poster against a white-painted wall. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hokusai koiai is a dark indigo-blue ink with oodles of sheen. Not an ink for a wet writer though, because it tends to oversaturate. But combine it with a stub-nib in a dry pen and you will be in writer’s heaven! This is also a wonderful ink to draw with – I truly enjoyed experimenting with it. Not the best TACCIA ink, but certainly worth a try. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
  10. From the album: Translated third-party content

    In reply to: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/368207-platinum-president-in-bluewhen-was-it-made/

    © Platinum Pen Co.


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  11. namrehsnoom

    TAG Kyoto - kyo-no-oto ruriiro

    TAG Kyoto – kyo-no-oto ruriiro TAG is a stationary shop in Kyoto (Japan) that produces some interesting soft watercolour-style inks. With the kyo-no-oto series, they produce a line of inks that replicates traditional Japanese dye colours. According to available online info, the manufacturing process of these kyo-no-oto inks follows traditional dying techniques dating back to the Heian era between the years 794 and 1185. The inks come in 40 ml bottles, packaged in luxurious thick paper with a texture that feels like heavy watercolour paper. In this review I take a closer look at ruriiro, a limited edition subtle deep blue-violet ink with a silvery shimmer. Yes… this is another ink with glitter, which seems to become more popular with ink makers. If you don’t care about that, just don’t shake the bottle and the glimmer particles won’t bother you. My feeling is that ink producers simply add the glitter to up-market their inks, supposedly to a more premium level, with corresponding price tag. It’s a trend that I personally can do without. The ink’s name reflects the colour of lapis lazuli, a vivid deep blue with violet undertones. In the Buddhist cosmology, “ruri” is produced on the south side of Mount Meru, the sacred five-peaked mountain that sits in the center of all universes. Ruriiro is a beautiful blue – it looks elegant & refined, and at the same time subdued & muted. The Buddhist connection fits this ink. For a TAG Kyoto ink, ruriiro is on the wet side, which was a pleasant surprise. I also noticed that there is fairly harsh shading while you write, with wetter parts being a substantially darker blue. But while the ink dries on the paper, that harshness disappears, leaving a muted blue behind with mostly soft and pleasant shading. The ink has a tendency to absorb into the paper, with quite a lot of see-through & bleed-through on most non-high-quality papers. For me, ruriiro is a samurai ink – refined, elegant, restrained – but with a deadly attack that only high quality paper survives. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. As you can see, ruriiro’s colour span is fairly limited – there is not that much contrast between light & dark parts (once the ink has dried). This translates to subtle-looking shading. Shading becomes more prominent with broad nibs & wet pens. What I like about this ink is that it adapts to the terrain – as you’d expect from a samurai warrior. This ink can look quite different depending on the pen/nib combination (see the nib size comparison’s below). Interesting! The ink’s chromatography clearly shows the strong violet undertones. It’s easy to overdo this, but with ruriiro, the blue & violet are nicely well-balanced. It’s definitely a blue ink, but with that violet undertone always subtly present in the background. Lovely! The bottom part of the chromatography indicates that the dyes easily detach from the paper. Ruriiro is not a water-resistant ink. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari A small text sample, written the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a Pelikan M101N (F-nib) Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Ruriiro is best used with pure white paper, where its elegance & muted character is best displayed. With more creamy paper, the ink loses most of its beauty. The ink coped well with all paper types with no visible feathering, even on (bleep) paper like Moleskine. But I already explained that ruriiro is a samurai ink: the katana cuts deep into the paper, and the result is visible on the backside. Quite some see-through and bleed-through on many paper types. Drying times are all over the place: from almost zero on highly absorbent paper, to a full 20 seconds on some hard-surface papers (with the M-nib Safari). I’ve also added a few photos to give you another view on the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, both scanner and photo capture quite well the real-world colour. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Kyo-no-oto ruriiro works well with all nib sizes, even the finest ones. The ink keeps its subtle character across the nib range, and always leaves a nice contrast-rich line. Be aware that this ink adapts to the terrain, and can look quite different depending on the paper used. For my nib-size test, I use Rhodia N°16 paper which has a hard surface. With Rhodia, the ink is not deeply absorbed into the paper, but dries more on the surface. With ruriiro, this seems to result in more explicit shading. With more absorbent paper, shading becomes a lot softer. I personally find this terrain-adapting character of ruriio fascinating, and one of this ink’s strong points. Related inks To compare this muted violet-blue ruriiro with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. I have no other blue like this in my collection. There are similarities with Diamine Tchaikovsky and Callifolio Bleu Ultramarine, but they still look quite different. Inkxperiment – city rain With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I’m working on. This one-ink drawing is a great way to show off the colour-range nuances that are present in the ink. I really enjoy this more creative part of the review: always good for a couple of fun-packed hours. The last couple of weeks, we had some mild rain showers in the area. Not the gloomy wheather kind, but the occasional soft showers alternating with sunny periods. I love the look of the the city at the end of these showers – everything looks so fresh and sparkly. I tried to capture this “city rain” feeling in today’s inkxperiment. The concept for this drawing started with a quick outline sketch in my journal. I used water-diluted ruriiro to paint the background on a sheet of A4-sized HP photo paper. I then used cotton Q-tips to draw the city blocks on the horizon. Next, I painted the foreground details with brush & pen, using pure ruriiro. I then did a finishing pass over the drawing, adding some final touches. The resulting picture gives you an idea of what can be achieved with ruriiro in a more artistic context. Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and am now adding another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. Conclusion TAG Kyoto kyo-no-oto ruriiro is a great-looking blue-violet with a muted character. The ink definitely looks at its best on pure white paper. But what I find really fascinating about ruriiro is that it expresses itself so differently across paper types, and even across nib sizes on a single page. Not only a beautiful blue, but also an interesting one with some unexpected moves. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with a Lamy Safari (M-nib) Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
  12. Hello my fellow fountain pen lovers. I love rich, vivid, deeply saturated fountain pen inks, particularly those that shade. My favorite inks are Colorverse Supernova, that shades gorgeously from a rich blue to a lighter blue, and Diamine November Rain, which in my green-and-black Pelikan M600, shades (you guessed it) from green to black beautifully. For my Lamy 2000, which I just bought to be my daily-use pocket pen, I’m searching for a waterproof ink for a specific reason: so when I sign restaurant checks with it, there is no danger of the waiter losing his tip because his check slip got wet and the ink disappeared. But my dillemma is that I love saturated, vivid inks. With one exception, all the waterproof inks I’ve tried are cloudy and unsaturated and unsatisfying. I just bought a bottle of Sailor Seiboku. To me, this is a pale, cloudy ink, the opposite of the rich, saturated colors I love. And iron gall inks are generally dry writers, so that’s a nonstarter. Got to have a wet ink. The exception is Noodler’s Baltimore Canyon Blue, which is saturated and beautiful, and in my own tests is fully waterproof, but… when I write on restaurant checks with this ink, the pen simply stops writing and has to be primed. The ink seems to react to the thermal paper restaurants use and it clogs right up. Thanks in advance for your advice! GNL
  13. Hello Fellow FPNers, I have been away from fountain pens for about 10 years after many years using them almost exclusively. Now that I’m back in the fold, I’m wondering if there are any well behaved, beautiful waterproof inks out there I might not know about. I remember that most of the waterproof or bulletproof inks I used (Noodler’s Luxury Blue comes to mind) tended toward nib creep and were very hard to wash out of pens. I’ve recently received a sample of Noodle’rs Zhivago and have been very impressed by its good behavior, lack of nib creep and good flow. But it basically looks black (barely a hint of green) and I’d prefer something in the blue-teal-green spectrum. MUST be a well behaved ink. Thanks for your insights! GNL
  14. Cursive Child

    Krishna Inks-Moonview

    Nice ink from Kerala, India. https://krishnainks.com/ Apologies for the poor handwriting, and wrong name in the review.
  15. Rohrer and Klingner Isatis Tinctoria (2021 Limited Edition) Rohrer and Klinger – founded in 1892 in Leipzig, Germany – is a company that is mainly focusing on inks for all purposes, including fountain pen inks. Like every self-respecting company these days, they have started the tradition of releasing a limited edition ink every year. In 2021, they introduced this splendid Isatis Tinctoria, a dusty blue with purple undertones. The ink comes in a 50 ml bottle presented in a stylish box. Isatis Tinctoria is already quasi impossible to find, and has reached “unobtainium” status. Fellow member @JulieParadise was so kind to provide me with a generous sample of this ink, with the request to compare it to kyo-iro Soft Snow of Ohara (resulting in an ink shoot-out). Afterwards, enough of the sample was left for a complete review of this wonderful ink. Thank you Julie for providing this opportunity. This Limited Edition R&K ink is a soft dusty blue with definite purple undertones. A really elegant & beautiful ink that totally fits my tastes. According to Wikipedia, Isatis Tinctoria (also called dyer’s woad) is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. Since ancient times, woad was an important source of blue dye and was cultivated throughout Europe. Rohrer & Klingner definitely succeeded in translating this inspiration into a fantastic ink colour. The chromatography shows a mix of blue, purple and grey. The dusty looks of the ink are clearly present. This combination of dyes translates to a soft and muted grey-blue with purple undertones. Definitely not a vibrant colour! But nevertheless an elegant ink – soft, quiet, shy. Part of my education comes from the 5-year old in the family, so I’m fluent in Frozen… for Isatis Tinctoria, think Anna, not Elsa. Isatis Tinctoria looks best in broader nibs, where it shows some really nice shading. But it can handle the complete nib range with ease – even with the EF nib, you already get hints of shading. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a piece of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Isatis Tinctoria has a fairly narrow colour span, with limited contrast between light and darker parts. This translates to soft shading, that is very present but remains delicate and aesthetically very pleasing. The shading on this ink is really well executed! Technically, the ink felt a bit dry-writing in my Lamy Safari test pens, especially with the finer nibs. Not so much an issue of wetness, but more of lubrication. With the finer nibs, you definitely feel more feedback from the paper while writing. With broader nibs, lubrication improves, and the ink starts writing much more fluently. In the writing samples below, I added a new paper to my test-set: Clairefontaine Smart Print Paper 60 gsm – a very fine fountain pen-friendly paper (Tomoe River-like in weight, but not as smooth but with some feedback while writing). On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Safari fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with B-nib Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Lamy Safari Source of the quote, with an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper, with the M-nib Lamy Safari I’ve also added a few photos to give you another view on the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, both scan and photo capture the ink’s colour well. Isatis Tinctoria looks good on all types of paper, both white and more creamy ones. I personally prefer it on pure white paper, where its soft and delicate character is best presented. The ink prefers high-quality paper. On lower quality papers (Moleskine, printing paper) you can see a tiny bit of feathering, and you also get some see-through and bleed-through. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Isatis Tinctoria writes a well-saturated line in all nib sizes, notwithstanding its softness. The saturation sample already showed the limited contrast range of the ink. As a result, this R&K ink manages to look really consistent in colour across the complete nib range, both in wet and dry pens. Personally, I like this ink best in the broader nibs, where the soft shading is a bit more prominent. Related inks To show off related inks, I use my nine-grid format, with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Isatis Tinctoria has a quite unique colour. It sits somewhere between kyo-no-oto keshimurasaki (which is greyer) and kyo-iro Soft Snow of Ohara (which is more purple). Inkxperiment – neuromancer As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. I find this to be a fun extension of the hobby, and these single-ink drawings often present a real challenge. It also gives you an idea of what the ink is capable of in a more artistic setting. Inspiration for this inkxperiment comes from the book “Neuromancer” by William Gibson. This book from 1984 is considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre. In the book you are presented with a drab and dystopian physical world, with the characters spending most of their time in the matrix of cyberspace. The whole book is written in adrenaline-high turbo-language – a quote: “He’d operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high, a byproduct of youth and proficiency, jacking into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix.” I started with an A5 sheet of 300 gsm watercolour paper, and used heavily water-diluted Isatis Tinctoria to paint in the light-blue background. The data towers in the matrix were coloured with a felt-tip pen, dipped in pure ink. The code in the matrix flows from the data towers, and was written with a 1.1 stub Edison Collier. Gravity has no place in the matrix – so the people living in it can assume any position. The reality in the upper-left corner was drawn with a fine brush and Q-tips. The main character is ready to leave reality, and dive into the vortex of cyberspace. The end-result gives you an idea of what can be achieved with Isatis Tinctoria as a drawing ink. Conclusion With this 2021 Limited Edition, Rohrer and Klingner delivered a beautiful soft & muted blue with purple undertones, that is already reaching “unobtainium” status. If you thrive on vibrant inks, this one will not be for you. But if you enjoy dusty and toned-down inks, then Isatis Tinctoria is sure to please you. In my opinion, it sits among the great ones in this category. If you can still get hold of a bottle, don’t hesitate and buy it immediately. You will not be disappointed! Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
  16. essayfaire

    MB Honore du Balzac Ink

    The brown ink from shipping made the sample label unreadable, I thought, but I have finally determined that the ink inside is MB Honore du Balzac. The se BJ page is in an Endless Notebook, the ink writes slightly wetter there (better and thicker paper). @amberleadavisplease move this to the right thread if I have it wrong. Thanks. @TheMustard, have I id'd correctly?
  17. namrehsnoom

    TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige asahanada

    TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige asahanada TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that - as far as I know - is now part of the Nakabayashi group. They offer high-quality fountain pens, inks, pen-rolls, notebooks, etc. More specifically, TACCIA produce a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e paintings from Japan’s Edo period (17th century). Ukiyo-e prints are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers, and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well. In this review, I take a closer look at asahanada, a pale indigo-blue that is inspired by the painting “Dye House at Konya-cho” of the artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1857). In Hiroshige’s day, anybody who knew Edo could recognize the city’s three most prominent landmarks: distant Mount Fuji, Chiyoda Castle, and Nihon Bridge. This particular painting features both the castle and mountain, leaving no doubt that this is an Edo scene. Hiroshige positions the viewpoint for this drawing amid the windblown textiles of a dyer’s drying platform. This woodprint is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Asahanada’s pale light-blue is modeled after the colour present on the banners. Asahanada is a soft pale blue, with a bit of a green undertone. The ink feels delicate, and caresses the paper with a soft line that exhibits beautiful shading. On its own, you might be reminded of a cerulean blue like iroshizuku kon-peki or Pelikan Edelstein Topaz, but this asahanada is a much softer ink that definitely stands on its own. This is not really an ink suited for the workplace, but I most certainly enjoyed using it while writing in my daily journal. Asahanada prefers wetter pens/nibs, where it looks at its best. With finer nibs in dry pens (like the Lamy Safari), the ink becomes a bit to pale with too little contrast with the paper. I quickly switched to wetter pens (Pelikan, Edison) to fully enjoy this ink. The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e painting. Lovely packaging for an excellent ink. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a strip of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Asahanada has a fairly narrow dynamic range, ranging from a very soft indigo-blue to a more saturated almost sky-blue. The contrast between the light and dark parts is fairly low, which translates to beautiful soft shading. The shading appears in all nib sizes - just a hint with the EF nib, but really present with F-nibs and above. The aesthetics are superb, adding lots of character to your writing. The ink’s chromatography clearly shows the green undertones within the ink. These green dyes are very water-soluble, and will readily surface when using asahanada for drawing. The bottom part of the chroma also indicates that this is a fairly water-resistant ink, which is confirmed during water tests. TACCIA’s ink makers Hiroshi Ishiguro and Hanse Matsumoto know their craft, and created a beautiful soft ink with a relatively simple mix of dyes. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with a Pelikan M101N with F-nib Source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the F-nib Pelikan) Asahanada looks gorgeous on pure white paper, where its shading and soft elegance really shine. I personally don’t like its look on more yellow/cream paper, where the ink gets a bit of a green tinge. The ink shows a tiny amount of feathering on lower quality paper, together with some show-through and bleed-through. Drying times with the F-nib Pelikan are in the 5 to 10 second range. I’ve also added a few photos to give you another view on the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, I find that the scans capture asahanada’s softness best – the photos make the ink look a bit too vibrant. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The EF-nib already shows a hint of shading. But it is with the F-nib and above that the ink’s elegant shading really comes into play. Look e.g. at the shading with the Edison 1.1 stub – that’s why I use a fountain pen! I personally prefer to use this ink with the wetter pens (Pelikan, Edison), where the ink gets a bit more saturated while preserving its soft and delicate nature. Related inks To compare asahanada with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Among the inks I already used, I found nothing that compares to asahanada. But in my mind, it’s similar to the sky-blues (kon-peki, topaz) if you tone them down quite a bit. Inkxperiment – air elemental With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I am presenting. These one-ink drawings are great for showing the colour-range nuances that can be achieved with the ink. And it’s great fun to experiment with inks in a more artsy context – I love doing these inkxperiments, even if they don’t always come out the way I wished them to be. In previous reviews, I introduced the elements water, earth and fire. For this inkxperiment, the blue asahanada represents the element “air” in the form of an air elemental. HP photo paper usually brings out the best in inks, so I decided to use it for this drawing too. In retrospect, this was not the best choice. The green components of the ink really come to the front, and the delicacy of the pale indigo-blue has been lost. Watercolour paper might have been a better choice for this inkxperiment. Also, the air elemental didn’t come out the way I imagined… too clunky and certainly not airy enough. Well… inkxperiments are fun to do, even if they fail. And it’s from such failures that you learn. Based on this inky experiment, I would conclude that asahanada is best reserved for writing – where the component dyes get separated, the soft pale-indigo beauty of the ink gets lost. Conclusion TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige asahanada is a very fine writing ink – on pure white paper, this pale indigo-blue produces soft & elegant writing that is great for personal journaling. And with a wet pen, the ink exhibits some truly beautiful shading! The ink looks gorgeous with the right combination of pen/nib/paper – in this case: wet pens, broader nibs, pure white paper. Leave this sweet spot though, and the ink quickly loses its magic. You have been warned! Personally, I really enjoyed using TACCIA asahanada, and I’m looking forward to explore more inks of the TACCIA Ukiyo-e line. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
  18. namrehsnoom

    Jacques Herbin - Bleu austral

    Jacques Herbin – Bleu austral La Société Herbin, Maître Cirier à Paris, was established in 1670. This makes J. Herbin probably the oldest name among European ink makers. Today, Herbin produces a range of beautiful fountain pen and calligraphy inks, writing instruments, gift sets and accessories. Herbin inks are made in France, and the finishing touches on the bottles are still done by hand in Paris. Like so many others, the company jumped on the premium product bandwagon, and started to release more high-end inks under the Jacques Herbin “Les encres essentielles” label. Nicer boxes, nicer packaging, much higher price (18,50 EUR versus the 7,50 EUR for the J. Herbin inks from the “La perle des encres” series). Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist and decided to test these new inks – are they really better than the standard J. Herbin inks? In this review, the spotlight is on Bleu austral, a strong blue leaning teal. The colour is really nicely done, and looks great on paper. The ink itself is wet-flowing and heavily saturated – in broad nibs it can even turn into a gusher. In my opinion, this is more of an ink for finer nibs and/or dry pens. Technically, the ink disappointed: it has a tendency to feather on more absorbent paper (even the one of high quality). You really need hard-surface paper for acceptable writing performance. Bleu austral is a heavy shader, and this in all nib sizes. Shading is never harsh and always looks aesthetically pleasing, due to the fairly small contrast range between light and darker parts. With wet pens, the ink really tends to oversaturate, which pushes away the shading. I therefore recommend using Bleu austral in combination with drier pens and/or fine nibs. To illustrate the ink’s colour span, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. This clearly demonstrates the ink’s dynamic range. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – there was lots of smearing. The text itself remains very readable though. Water resistance is fairly low. There remains a greyish residue of the text on the page, that is still easily readable, but most of the colour disappears. This is clearly visible in the chromatography: the blue colour dissipates with the water, leaving only a grey residue behind. Not what I would call a water-resistant ink. Drying times for this Jacques Herbin ink vary with the type of paper, ranging from less than 5 seconds on absorbent paper to 10-20 seconds on hard-surfaced paper (all with my Lamy Safari M-nib test pen). With the absorbent paper, I see quite some feathering – even on higher quality paper. You also get a fair amount of see-through and bleed-through. This ink is definitely picky in the type of paper it prefers. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the M-nib Lamy Safari The source of the quote, written with an Edison Collier with 1.1 stub Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Bleu austral looks equally good on white and more creamy paper. For my personal taste, it is way too saturated though – I definitely prefer a softer look in my inks. Since scans alone don’t tell the complete story, I’ve added some photos of the same writing samples to give you another view on the ink. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. All samples were written with a Lamy Safari, which is typically a dry pen. I also added a visiting pen – a wet-writing Edison Collier with a 1.1 stub. With the wet pen or with broad nibs in dry pens, the ink leaves an overly saturated line, and loses much of the shading. I personally prefer this ink in combination with a dry pen (M-nib or below) – it simply looks nicer: a blue-heavy teal with subtle shading. The wetter the pen, the darker and more one-dimensional the ink becomes. Related inks To allow for a good comparison with related inks, I employ my nine-grid format, with the currently reviewed ink at the center. Each grid cell shows the name of the ink, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. As you can see, there is quite some competition in this colour segment. Personally, I would rather avoid the technical issues of this Jacques Herbin ink, and go for one of the other options. Inkxperiment – river goddess As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. With these monochromatic pieces, I get to explore all the colour-range nuances that are present in the ink. This is my favourite part of the review: experimenting with the ink, and trying to be creative… pure quality time! We recently had some severe flooding in our part of Europe. Rivers, that are normally leisurely meandering in a peaceful landscape, turned into wild and angry monsters that threatened lives and property on their shores. In ancient times, such behaviour was usually attributed to the whimsical mood of the river goddess. Wild waters were a sure sign that the goddess was displeased with her people. I tried to capture this idea in the inkxperiment, that shows the goddess against the background of a wild and choppy river. For this drawing I used an A4 piece of HP photo paper, which is my favourite medium for doing inkxperiments. The photo paper really brings out the best from the ink. I first created the river background with the wood flotsam. I used painter tape to cover up the flotsam part, and used a cut-out piece of kitchen towel to paint in the choppy river. For this I sprinkled different water/ink ratios on top of the kitchen towel, which then pressed through to the underlying photo paper. I then used a piece of cardboard and pure Bleu austral to paint in the flotsam. Next, I painted in the river goddess with a fine brush, and used a small triangular potato cut-out to stamp in the different triangles. I finally used my B-nibbed Safari pen to add some finishing touches. The resulting piece gives you an idea of what can be achieved with Bleu austral in a more artistic setting. Conclusion Jacques Herbin Bleu austral is a nice blue-leaning teal. The ink is very saturated though, and – in my opinion – too much so in wet pens or with broad nibs. The ink also has technical shortcomings, and doesn’t cooperate with more absorbent paper. For a premium product, I had higher expectations. In my opinion, this ink is not really worth the premium price: there are lots of other inks to choose from in this colour spectrum. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types
  19. This is a review of the now-defunct Swedish ink manufacturer Rosendahls, their Cadet Blue fountain pen ink, of the Scrivil series, which appears to have a military theme. Since the ink is no longer in production, it can only be found vintage, although several FPN'ers have found several here & there, it is probably a challenge to acquire. Now, with that said, let's see how it looks..! The bottle looks a lot like the normal Pelikan ink bottle, and can be sat slightly on its side to allow for easy emptying when the ink level starts to get low, plus the opening is of a good size. The first writing test is with a no-name "Iridium Point Germany" pen with an EF nib, see discussions elsewhere about these pens. The ink flows very nicely, with good lubrication, and makes a potentially scratchy pen nice & smooth to write with. Color is a pale blue, I'd even call it a baby blue, which is too pale in my eyes for everyday writing. However, there is no feathering, the letters have clear definition and no shading is seen here. Second writing test is with a Jinhao X450 with the factory M nib, which is infamous for writing wet. Also here, good ink flow, nice lubrication and it just writes very well. Like the previous test, we see no feathering and each letter is clearly defined. But look at the color! This is now a medium blue instead, which is a nice surprise. It indicates a dynamic blue which will probably shade well. More on that later. If you look *very* closely, you can see shading in the letters here, but only by zooming in on a hi-res pic. Third writing test is just a quick experiment with a dip pen, which did not go super well, but still showed that the color deepens as you lay down more ink, and a little border shading is seen, but otherwise it is an example of how little I know about dip pens. Next comes the ink swab, where you clearly see color difference according to amount of ink, and border shading both in the triple layer, near bottom, plus in the circles, left. We see several shades of blue, from baby blue to navy, which is very nice to see in what you might think is just a simple, almost boring, light blue, and so it appears at first glance, but this li'l fella has more layers than an onion! 😃 The water resistance test shows that 90% of the ink goes away from having water dropped on it, making it quite the opposite of water resistant. 🤔 My conclusion is that this is an extremely well-behaved ink, fully functional despite being at least 30 years old, possibly 50, very dynamic in coloring and with great potential for shading. It dries quite quickly when writing normally, 5+ seconds, even on Rhodia paper, and in all the tests I made there was not a single bleed-thru. I had no hard starts or drying ink in the pens used. Since it's not waterproof, I wouldn't call it archival, although it might be UV-resistant, I have no data on that. What I *do* know is that this is an ink which is very easy and pleasant to use, with properties which we might wish were in more modern inks. I will finish with a writing sample inspired by Matt of The Pen Habit, showing a quote from one of my favorite authors. Stay safe, Daneaxe
  20. silverlifter

    KWZ Iron Gall Blue #3

    I'm surprised this has not been reviewed yet. This is my favourite of KWZ's iron gall inks. Still close enough to a more traditional iron gall in terms of water fastness, colour change, dry time and performance, but with enough blue remaining to make it not just another blue-black. Dry time for normal handwriting is closer to 5 seconds, but a broader, wetter pen will be longer, hence the heavy swatch test. Dry swab was after 20 minutes, wet after 2-3. Paper is Rhodia dot.
  21. Ink Shoot-Out : Diamine Prussian Blue vs kyo-no-oto aonibi I have been playing around with some blue inks the past couple of weeks. Two of them are real beauties that definitely fit my taste: Diamine Prussian Blue and TAG Kyoto kyo-no-oto aonibi. Both are muted, toned-down blues that look really, really nice. They are definitely of the same family, but also totally different in character. This piqued my interest… time for a detailed comparison to find out which ink I like the most. Enter... the Ink Shoot-Out. A brutal fight spanning five rounds, where two inks engage in fierce battle to determine who is the winner. And tonight’s fight is really special: two world-class champions with diametrically opposed fighting styles. In the left corner, from the United Kingdom, the bulldog from Liverpool, grandmaster of free-style boxing … Diamine Prussian Blue. In the right corner, from the temple of Kyoto, the slender kung-fu master kyo-no-oto aonibi. Both champions enter the ring. The crowds go wild for what promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime fight. The bell rings, signaling the start of the first round. May the best ink win … Round 1 – First Impressions Both inks make a stellar first impression. Wonderful soft muted blues, that look great on paper – both in written text and in swabs. These inks have a definite vintage vibe, giving a certain “chic” to your writing. These champions have style! Both inks exhibit elegant and aesthetic shading, without too much contrast between the light and darker parts. Great looking stuff! In this first round, both champions give their best, and both throw serious punches at their opponent: Prussian Blue is definitely the better writing ink. It writes wet and well-lubricated. The Japanese ink also lays down a fairly wet line, but suffers from sub-par lubrication resulting in a scratchy feel of pen-on-paper. Kyo-no-oto aonibi shows a more delicate colour that soothes the senses. Prussian Blue also looks great but has more of a dirty purple-grey undertone… nothing delicate about it. Aonibi’s lines look sharper and more defined on the page. In comparison, Prussian Blue’s lines are spread wider. Both inks make a great first impression. Prussian Blue is a delight to write with, but aonibi manages to look seriously better on the paper – it just has that delicate softness that is missing from the Diamine ink. A fair fight with punches in both directions, but overall the supple moves of aonibi win the day. As such, the first round goes to the fighter-priest of Kyoto. Round 2 – Writing Sample The writing sample was done on Rhodia N°16 Notepad with 80 gsm paper. Both inks behaved flawlessly, with no feathering and no show-through or bleed-through. With the EF nib, aonibi felt really scratchy, with barely tolerable lubrication. This improved when using broader nibs, but overall the ink keeps suffering from sub-par lubrication. In contrast, Prussian Blue glides effortlessly across the page even with the EF nib. With a lightning-fast left-right, the English champion delivers a solid strike that punches through it’s opponents defenses. The crowd jumps to its feet, roaring its approval. Aonibi recovers by showing a much crisper line on the page: your writing looks sharper and more defined. And the kung-fu master’s moves are a delight, even when they fail to connect. Colourwise, aonibi just looks better! But this round is about the writing act, and here the bulldog from Liverpool certainly has the upper hand. As such, this round goes to Prussian Blue on points. The crowd cheers on the champions. A great show with superlative fighters that are closely matched! Round 3 – Pen on Paper This round allows the battling inks to show how they behave on a range of fine writing papers. From top to bottom, we have : FantasticPaper, Life Noble, Tomoe River and Original Crown Mill cotton paper. All scribbling and writing was done with a Lamy Safari M-nib. Both champions did well, with no show-through nor bleed-through. But this round is not about technicalities, it is about aesthetics and beauty. Are the fighters able to make the paper shine ? One thing is immediately apparent: these inks are at their best on pure white paper. Muted blues are no good match for creamy paper… they just don’t look right. Diamine Prussian Blue has definite purple grey undertones that are fairly obvious. Aonibi is a much purer and richer blue, which shows more depth and has a more delicate nature. It just looks more refined next to Prussian Blue, showing superior soul and character. In my opinion, there is no competition: aonibi rules the fight. The English champion tries to hit its opponent, but the kung-fu master just glides away with supple gestures. And suddenly… aonibi hits its opponent with a flurry of four thumping strikes, stopping short of the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart blow. Prussian Blue simply crumbles to the floor. For a moment the boxing hall falls to a complete silence. Then the audience explodes and roars its approval. What a fight! Round 4 – Ink Properties Both inks have drying times in the 15-20 second range with the M-nib in my Lamy Safari. The Japanese ink dries just a tad faster than Prussian Blue. To test their smudge resistance, I rubbed the text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab. Here, both inks show definite smudging, but the text itself remains crisp and clear. To test water resistance, I dripped water on the grid and let it sit there for 15 minutes, after which I removed the water with a paper towel. Both champions can survive watery accidents. Some colour disappears, but there’s enough ink left on the page to easily read what is left. Kyo-no-oto aonibi leaves more smudges on the page though. A slight advantage for the Diamine ink. Not a great round. The champions keep circling one another, without much initiative from either side. As such this round ends with a draw. Round 5 – The Fun Factor Welcome to the final round. Here I give you a purely personal impression of both inks, where I judge which of them I like most when doing some fun stuff like doodling and drawing. And for this round, both inks are simply amazing. I did the drawing on HP Advanced Photo paper. The background uses heavily water-diluted ink. For the field I added a bit more ink, and next used a brush to paint in the lines that add texture. The trees and clouds where painted in with pure ink. Diamine Prussian Blue clearly shows its dirty grey-purple undertones. Aonibi retains its delicate muted blue nature – even when diluted with water. As far as colour goes, I definitely like the Japanese ink more. But Prussian Blue surprised me by the way the ink dries… you get a strong haloing effect that gives the drawing a cartoony feel. Really special. Both inks are great looking when used in a more artistic setting. I enjoyed using them both. For this round, both champions recovered completely, and gave their best. Lightning fast punches , elegant and graceful moves, solid kicks. A stunning display of exploding energy… The crowd can’t get enough of it. This truly is the fight of the century! Round 5 is the crown jewel of this fight, but in the end both champions are equally good, and no clear winner emerges. As such, this round ends in a draw. The Verdict Both inks are great-looking soft and muted blues, that simply look fantastic on pure white paper. They have quite different characters… and I love them both. These champions deserve their place among the greatest. But the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart move cannot be ignored, and wins the day. As such, the Belgian judge declares kyo-no-oto aonibi the winner of this exciting shoot-out.
  22. namrehsnoom

    Colorverse Quasar

    Colorverse Quasar Colorverse is a South Korean company that produces inks that are well-known for their iconic bottles and for their astronomy-related names. The Quasar in this review is from their season 2 inks that were released under the theme “Astrophysics”. The package comes with a big 65 ml bottle and a cute 15 ml small one. Fellow member Lgsoltek graciously gifted me a whole bunch of samples when leaving Paris, giving me the opportunity to try out a range of new inks. This Colorverse Quasar was one of them. Quasar is a richly saturated purple-leaning blue. The ink writes really well in all nib sizes with very good lubrication. It’s also an ink with a serious golden sheen, especially when using wet nibs. On the other hand, no shading to speak of (probably due to the high level of saturation). Personally, this is not my type of colour and the ink is too saturated for my taste. But that’s just me, you can make your own judgement using the information below. Quasar has a very limited dynamic range, with almost no contrast between light and dark parts. To illustrate this, I did a swab where I really saturated portions of the Tomoe River paper with ink, pooling it on. This lack of contrast explains why you get little shading in your writing (especially in finer nibs - the blow-up below with a B-nib is a bit misleading in this respect). You can also see that Quasar is well-saturated. As a result, the ink works great with EF nibs, where it produces a very readable and contrast-rich line. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – there is a huge amount of smearing, but the text itself remains crisp and clear. Water resistance is completely lacking. The still water test (letting drops of water sit on the page for 15 minutes) produces a colourful mess. With the running water test all ink simply disappears, leaving next to nothing on the page (see water test at the end of the review). I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the M-nib The source of the quote, written with the B-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib) Colorverse Quasar has a slight tendency to feather on the lower quality papers in my test set, most obvious when using a wet pen. I noticed no issues with better quality paper or when using finer nibs (M-nib or below). A bummer for me was that I also got some feathering on the Paperblanks paper, which is what I use for daily journaling. This is probable due to some inconsistencies during paper production. I’ve noticed that from time to time you get a bundle of paper of lesser quality. Happened a handful of times – I did a quick calculation: 11 notebooks (of 176 pages), a handful of bad bundles (5x 12 pages): that translates to 3% suboptimal paper. A bummer when it happens, but I can live with a 97% success rate. The ink writes smoothly with good lubrication, and provides excellent contrast with the page. Writing looks good on both white and more yellow paper, but I do prefer the ink’s look on the cream paper. Drying times are fairly low – in the 5 to 10 second range with my Lamy Safari M-nib. At the end of the review, I also show the back-side of the different paper types, in the same order. A small amount of bleed-through is present on some of the lower-quality papers, but nothing too bad. Since scans alone are not always enough to give you a complete picture of the ink, I also provide you with a few photos for an alternative look at Quasar blue. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Being a saturated ink, Quasar looks good in all nib sizes from EF up to 1.9 calligraphy nib. I personally prefer this ink with the F/M nib sizes. It’s presence on the page becomes a bit too dominant with the broader nibs. Related inks To compare Quasar with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Diamine Sargasso Sea comes close in colour. Inkxperiment – Looking Out The Window With every review I try to do a single-ink drawing that shows what the ink is capable of in a more artistic setting. The most fun part of the ink review, and I quite enjoy brainstorming and then implementing these little pieces. I had only a very limited amount of ink available, so I needed to maximally reuse the Q-tips used for the swabs in the writing samples. For this inkxperiment I started with a piece of 10x15 cm HP photo paper. I used the Q-tips from the swabs to draw the windows. Next, I used a kitchen sponge and heavily water-diluted ink to sponge in the background. For the window contours, I used my Lamy Safari M-nib and pure Quasar. Finally, a non-water diluted Q-tip was used to draw in the patterns, and the figure looking out the window. This little drawing gives you an idea of what can be achieved with Colorverse Quasar in a more artistic setting. Conclusion Colorverse Quasar is a very saturated blue with a strong purple undertone. The ink has a few shortcomings: prone to smudging, no water-resistance. But it works well in all nib sizes and writes flawlessly on better quality paper. I noticed a slight tendency to feather on lower-quality paper. For me personally, this ink is no good match: too saturated, and the colour doesn’t really speak to me. But that’s just me. You can draw your own conclusions with the info above. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types
  23. namrehsnoom

    TAG Kyoto - kyo-no-oto - hisoku

    TAG Kyoto - kyo-no-oto - hisoku TAG is a stationary shop in Kyoto (Japan) that produces some interesting soft watercolour-style inks. With the kyo-no-oto series they produce a line of inks that replicates traditional Japanese dye colours. According to available only info, the manufacturing process of the kyo-no-oto inks follows traditional dying techniques dating back to the Heian era between the years 794 and 1185. The inks come in 40 ml bottles, packaged in luxurious thick paper with a texture that feels like heavy watercolour paper. In this review I take a closer look at hisoku, a grey steel-blue with green undertones. An interesting colour this one, soft and pale, but at the same time delicate as the seijit porcelain from which it draws its inspiration. Another TAG Kyoto ink that’s right up my alley. Hisoku translates to “secret colour”. It is named after the mysterious beauty of the ash-coloured blue-green unique to Celadon pottery (also known as greenware). The colour of this ink catches the porcelain’s colour perfectly. Very nicely done! The ink writes really dry with my standard Lamy Safari test pens. Saturation is also quite low, especially with the finer nibs. Nevertheless, it still leaves a very readable line even with the Lamy EF nib. This may be a soft and pale ink, it still provides enough contrast with the paper to ensure very legible writing. With wetter pens, the writing experience improves significantly. I would personally avoid this ink with drier pens. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of the Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Hisoku has a fairly broad dynamic range, but being a pale ink, there is no harsh contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to strong but still elegant shading. Be aware that my scanner tends to exaggerate the contrast, making the shading look harsher than in reality. I’ve therefore added some photo’s to the writing samples below, to allow you to get a better feel for the ink. The chromatography shows the soft and delicate nature of this kyo-no-oto ink. The bottom part of the chroma suggests a fair amount of water resistance, but this is not reflected in the real world. With water tests, there does remain ink on the paper, but it’s not easily readable and requires patience deciphering. Slightly accident-proof would be more accurate to characterise hisoku’s water resistance. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper — from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, with a wet-writing Lamy Dialog 3 with M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) Hisoku looks great on all my test papers, with no visible feathering even with the horrible Moleskine paper. Show-through and bleed-through are quasi absent — only the Moleskine gets some minor bleed-through, but still not too bad. Drying times cluster around the 5 second mark with my Lamy Safari M-nib pen. I personally prefer hisoku with pure white paper, where it looks its best. A beautiful soft & delicate pale-blue that simply looks wonderful. I really appreciate the beauty of this ink. I’ve also added a few photos to give another view on the ink. In the scanner samples above, the shading contrast in the written text is a bit exaggerated, making it look too harsh. The photos below show a more realistic view of the ink’s shading. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Kyo-no-oto hisoku has low saturation, but still manages enough contrast with the page to make for very legible writing, even with the EF nib. Be aware that it is a dry ink, and as such no good match for dry pens like the Lamy Safari. I suggest you use this ink with wetter pens and/or broader nibs to get a more enjoyable experience. And the ink’s elegant shading is always present, enhancing your writing, no matter what pen/nib combination you choose. Related inks To compare this soft grey-blue hisoku with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the centre. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test — all in a very compact format. I really have no other ink that comes close in colour. J. Herbin Vert De Gris is from the same family but way more saturated. It doesn’t even try to match hisoku’s soft delicacy. Inkxperiment — angry Mother Earth With every review, I try to create an inkxperiment using only the ink I’m working on. These one-ink drawings are a great way to bring out the colour-range nuances that are present in the ink. I really enjoy doing them: it’s fun, and a good way to stretch my creativity and drawing skills. Inspiration comes from the evermore visible results of climate change: climbing temperature, melting icecaps, stronger storms, … Mother Earth is not happy! I started with a piece of HP photo paper on which I drew a sketch of Mother Earth with my fountain pen. I then used a rolled-up piece of kitchen paper as a stamp, and filled in the background with water-diluted hisoku. I then added the radiance using Q-tips dipped in multiple water/ink mixes, and filled in the goddess figure with a Q-tip dipped in pure ink. Extra accents were added with my fountain pen. I’m not totally satisfied with the result, but the resulting picture does give you an idea of what can be achieved with hisoku as a drawing ink. Conclusion I’ve tried a number of TAG Kyoto inks to date, and love them all. This line of inks really fits my taste – I’m glad I discovered them. Hisoku is an ink that totally nails it: a soft and delicate pale grey-blue with green undertones. A truly beautiful ink that works really well with all my test papers. Be aware that it definitely is a dry ink, and that it needs wet pens and/or broad nibs for a pleasant writing experience. Hisoku’s colour and toned-down appearance are probably not for everyone, but if you enjoy soft inks, this one is another winner from the TAG Kyoto stable. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
  24. Introduction and Elephant in the room Lets take elephants out of picture. First is controversy that surrounded the bottle design which actually is a patent design of Gecko design and this was cause of issue which has been addressed since then. What happened behind the scene is of no concern to me as end result seems to be good for all. Basically ink is available to buy. Now bottle is well already quite nice looking and half of the folks (including me) would probably jump the gun for bottle over other blue ink, so before diving in ink lets clear this guy out. There are some pros and cons of this bottle design. First what the bottle was originally designed for by gecko is to be used as ink well and it works great as such, any pro and con arises from this very fact so use as you may. Ink was shipped separately outside the box to prevent mishaps during shipping so starting point is empty bottle. Pros include looks, nice design for dips and general filling of ink and well attraction factor (all those who saw the bottle ask where I got it from and if only bottle is available and if larger size is present...so yeah it attracts attention) last the separation of ink mouth and reservoir has real practical benefits when using dip pens and filling pens. There is one other from what I feel but its too vague so I won’t put here. Cons include, glass is on thinner side so be careful. There is bubble issue which happens as if reservoir has ink over channel. The issue is not really as big of deal and can be delt with by moving bottle a bit. Last is size of mouth. I have not seen problem with my pens but I have a feeling that absolute jumbo pens like ranga ganesha might not fit properly to extract the inks from mouth in respect that nib not dipping completely..can’t test it as I lack such pens. All in all its one unique bottle and sure will be liked a lot. Ink review section Paakezah in persian is a word for ‘pure’ and this ink and so the reference of ink as the complete blue on Krishna website. Ink is first in line of Krisna’s S series inks which they say is safe sheen ink for vintage pens and I agree with them on this after testing it. Test papers include 75gsm sectra copy paper 70gsm and 85gsm nightingale paper 52gsm classmate copy paper 100gsm JK Cedar bond papers. Random books back sides and some unknown real cheap papers. Ink properties Bleeding/Ghosting – None seen on any paper tested except for cheap ones. Feathering – None to minimal on very cheap ones. Saturation – Good Flow – Balanced flow with very slight tending to wet side. Dry time - varies from 12 to 20 seconds. Sheen – moderately high. Shading – Not seen as shades are pretty much sheen spots. Water Resistance – none (will not survive water). A write sample in high resolution meant to test the new limits of uploads plus general opinion of ink. The camera is pea shooter phone camera. I tried to get as accurate color as I could with phone. the image is quite accurate just tiny bit more dark then in real.... water resistance results. Paakezah shows no other color, at least in normal case I still have not tested chromatic test, other then blue and its shades. The sheen seen has metallic color and is reddish-violet. The ink show high sheen on decent papers but non-absorbing papers are preferred as with all sheen inks. I must point out though that it is by no means a sheen monster but there is enough sheen that one will not have to look for it, its simply visible on paper in all its glory when seen with naked eye and the fact that I can see such on mostly normal papers says a lot. some sheen seen in writing. The entire page has such results just hard to get photograph in one go. I feel the ink lies on darker spectrum of blue, its very blue just not light shade. All in all its interesting in respect that it manages to separate itself from usual blue lots like waterman serenity blue and lamy blue ink even without any sheen. Still sheen is the highlight and you might wanna go with decent paper on this one. screenshot if ink from Krishna inks website There were never any hard starts or skips in 3 pens that I tried with decent flow maintained in all types of writing from fast to weird. Wality 69EB, Ranga Slim Bamboo and Oliver Exam pen are 3 test lots. Now cleaning is easy and water is suffice here. As for safe..well I tried clogging the pen with the ink by letting the nib open and drying the pen for one day...still managed to clean the pens with soap water. There ware no stains left and disassembly of the pen showed no clogs or residue. So I think it should be safe for any pen. I tested these results on Oliver exam pen which is clear demonstrator and makes it easy to observe such results. other sample with full page writing. Do tell if higher resolution image is preferred over this one. All in all a nice ink even without the bottle. Conclusion For the price of Rs 949..or approx. $12.5 without delivery….its a steal especially with the bottle and by looks of it being mostly on pre-order I will say that its selling like cakes. The customer service of Krishna inks was great, all orders were placed from their website and notifications were sent via email. Any quarries and questions were replied via email and replied within 2 days. It was a pleasant experience overall. Disclaimer: entire writing seen is done on 100GSM JK cedar paper. I lack tomoe river but I am confident the ink will sheen more on that page.
  25. I have bought several blue inks hoping that they were as bright as they seemed to appear. However, the results have so far been disappointing. Krisha's inks seem to be reasonably priced with a lot of interesting colours. I want advice about Krishna's blue inks from the users. If I had to pick 3 blue inks, which ones would you recommend? They should be as bright as posssible with relatively short drying times, decent lubrication and minimal feathering.





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