Royal Mix

[sansenri]

I like Pelikan Royal blue. I started writing with this ink and have used it for many years without ever using any other, in the era of one pen / one ink.

I still like how it behaves and looks. It's just a pity it tends to fade and on some papers more than others tends to look somewhat washed out.

I like the colour shade, I know it tends slightly towards purple, but then again it would not be Royal otherwise.

I also like how it flows, the fact that it's quite dry on absorbent paper, and can shade nicely especially on coated paper.

Since I also like Pelikan pens, with time I have built up quite a reservoir of Royal blue, not by choice but by chance, since many Pelikan pens, especially special/limited editions, come with a complementary bottle of Royal blue.

Nowadays that I've moved also to other inks, although with a great prevalence of blues, I'm often using my reservoir of this ink for experiments.

Typical tentative mixes are blue + black, blue + purple. I'm not so fond of blue + green, although I have used this ink in view of its purplish tinge to make some blue-green inks look more neutral.

 

This mix I'm showing here is a not so obvious: blue + blue.

I happened to think, as this experience is already confirmed by adding either black or purple to this ink, that adding some darker, more saturated ink to Royal blue may affect it positively, and that should work also by adding another blue.

I did not have to think a lot about it, I have a sample bottle of Sargasso sea, and since I like this Diamine ink, I also have a full bottle.

The sample bottle is half full and the perfect available darker shade to add some character to Royal blue.

I had planned to try different ratios but it also happens that I like the first tested ratio, and did not go ahead to try others.

 

Pelikan Royal blue 4 parts to Diamine Sargasso Sea blue 1 part.

 

I'm using a vintage bottle of Royal blue, which was unopened when I got it a few years ago, but is now in use since a while (more than 1 year surely).

I do not notice much difference vs current royal blue, perhaps just a tad more greyish.

The bottle

 

I used two separate ordinary metered syringes, to avoid contaminating inks, and put 4 ml of Royal blue + 1 ml of Sargasso sea in a sample vial.

I then just closed and stirred the vial.

This is what it looks like, you can already see the mix is less purple than Royal blue.

 

I then tested the resulting mix vs the two starting inks. A very quick comparison.

 

Some brief impressions

The mix is darker than Royal blue and lighter than Sargasso

The mix is less purplish and more blue than Royal blue

The mix has a faint turquoise hue

The mix has some shading although more evident on glossy paper

The mix is dry on copy paper and more wet on glossy paper, much like Royal blue

The mix has no sheen compared to Sargasso

The mix looks more contrasted and less faded vs Royal blue

dry time is about 10 seconds on copy paper and about 25 seconds on glossy paper, when dry it does not smudge further

 

a closer look vs Sargasso, it's still quite saturated despite being less concentrated

 

 

The pen used was a Wing Sung 3008 with a Lamy B nib

(don't judge the sloppy writing...)

 

I have not tested compatibility, but I am not expecting problems with these two inks. The vial will sit there on my desk for a while in any case.

Then I'll probably fill a nicer pen and take it to work.

[migo984]

Interesting mix. It appears to be a big improvement on the Pure Royal Blue (according to my personal tastes). Not significantly different; more a richer, more definitive hue.

 

A couple of questions: will you be testing it over a longer period for fading? And does it inherit any of Sargasso’s tendency to stain?

[sansenri]

thank you for asking.

Yes, there are four main reasons for trying this out

 

One is I have lots of this ink, and it's fun to use some up experimenting.

 

The second is certainly that despite how much I like Royal blue the fading issue does bother me some, so I will test it to see what happens.

 

The third is that although Sargasso is one of my favourite blues, it's so saturated that it tends to clog pens, so dilution should help.

Dilution with water is one thing, dilution with more ink is a different approach, that sounded interesting.

I have not really experienced staining with Sargasso, but I can see how it could in some cases.

 

The fourth reason is to slightly change the tone of Royal blue without changing its behaviour too much.

This seems to be confirmed already despite somewhat limited testing, the behaviour of the resulting mix is not so different from Royal blue, which in a way is what I would expect since 4 parts out of 5 are Royal blue.

 

Regarding the fading I can already anticipate probable interesting results, I have tested an earlier mix of Royal blue + Bilberry (10:1) and it's amazing how one part of Bilberry seems to stop the fading altogether.

 

Regarding reducing the clogging effect of Sargasso, I should probably test different ratios of Sargasso vs Royal (more Sargasso) to see which amount of Royal blue is sufficient to stop the excessive saturation.

One thing we are likely to lose doing this is Sargasso's sheen.

 

Regarding the colour tone, I was expecting the addition of Sargasso would strengthen the colour making it darker, but I was rather (positively) surprised that a particular turquoise tone also showed up in the mix. This tone is not so evident in Sargasso. So the resulting mix is subtly different from both Sargasso and Royal blue.

 

My photos show this partly, but in real life it is even more evident.

[mhguda]

I have added Sargasso to Parker Quink washable blue and got a very much improved blue, even though my proportion was closer to 1:10 (IIRC - it's been a good while). I still use the bottle I made of it. I haven't looked to closely into its characteristics, though. Once I got a color I liked, I got lazy.

[Eclipse157]

Thank you for sharing such a pretty experiment. It really shows how concentrated Sargasso Sea is: Pelikan 4001 looks like rinse water in comparison. I find your mixture very pleasing and relaxing to the eye. Well done.

[sansenri]

I have added Sargasso to Parker Quink washable blue and got a very much improved blue, even though my proportion was closer to 1:10 (IIRC - it's been a good while). I still use the bottle I made of it. I haven't looked to closely into its characteristics, though. Once I got a color I liked, I got lazy.

Thanks, happens to me too, I've been doing these mixing experiments since a while, but only got round to writing about it this time as the result seemed worth mentioning.

[sansenri]

Thank you for sharing such a pretty experiment. It really shows how concentrated Sargasso Sea is: Pelikan 4001 looks like rinse water in comparison. I find your mixture very pleasing and relaxing to the eye. Well done.

Thank you, there are at least another two likely mixes suggested by the results I got,

roughly approximating, a 10 parts to 1 mix is likely to look closer to Royal blue, but retain some additional liveliness,

while a 2 to 1 mix is likely to look very similar to Sargasso, without the excessive saturation that tends to clog pens.