J. Herbin Rouge Caroubier - A Quick Look

[TheDutchGuy]

When visiting the local pen shop for some paper or whatever, I always buy a 10 mL sample bottle of an ink that I don't have yet. It's a fun and inexpensive way to check out new inks. My main writing ink these days is Akkerman Blue #3, but for other colours I'm particularly enamoured by J. Herbin. This time I took home a small bottle of Rouge Caroubier. This is an interesting ink. In the bottle, it's really translucent, like cherry lemonade. So I wondered: how pale is this going to look on paper..? Will this have any colour to it? Well, yes. Definitely. But as always it depends on the pen you use it in - this particular ink benefits from a relatively wet nib. Case in point: the image was made by dipping a Kaweco Classic Sport F into the bottle, and the result was fantastic. But after filling that same Kaweco's converter with this ink, the result was dry and pale. That same pen works fantastic with other inks, so there you go.

 

I took care to make the image look like it does to the naked eye, i.e. I edited the photo to make it look as close as possible to the real thing. I find this to be a very pleasant shade of red. My eyes see a lot of yellow in this. As always with Herbin, the ink lubricates well, which makes for a pleasant writing experience. I'm still deciding which pen to use this in, but it might end up in a TWSBI Eco 1.1 Stub.