Jacques Herbin Gris de Houle – a lazy review

[A Smug Dill]

 

Colour: Grey, and probably as neutral a grey as I've come across in fountain pen ink.

 

Flow and lubrication: Moderate flow, but somewhat watery instead of lubricating.

 

Feathering: Not observed on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper.

Show-through: Not observed on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper, even where I've gone filled a square area with four passes of diagonal strokes.

Bleed-through: Not observed on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper, even when I accidentally let a large drop fall (where the Latin passage is) on the page, then left it to dry slowly and naturally.

 

 

 

Water resistance: Good.

 

 

Drying time: Relatively quick, about 11 seconds on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper, for the intersection of two pen strokes (in the lowercase ‘t’).

 

 

 

Shading: Lots of shading to be observed when ‘printing’ in English and/or writing in Chinese, due to the high incidence of touching/intersecting short lines, but probably less shading that you would expect from a grey ink when writing in a cursive hand with long unbroken strokes.

Sheen: Not observed on Rhodia Dotpad 80g/m² paper or Arttec Como Drawing Pad 210gsm paper for mixed media art, even where I let a drop of ink fall and splatter.

 

 

My verdict: I think this is a very good grey ink that does not lean towards any hue, is quick to dry, and offers good water resistance; that shading largely only manifest itself in short pen strokes or where lines intersect is not a shortcoming to me, especially for how I write what I write. For the life of me though, I just couldn't get this ink to exhibit that lovely shift to green I see on marketing images and others' reviews of this ink; that's a little bit of a disappointment.

[mizgeorge]

Thanks ASD - great review as always - and far from lazy IMO! 

 

This is one of my favourites in the lighter to mid grey range - I love its simplicity, but I'd never tested water resistance, and I'm surprisingly impressed. 

 

It would be rare for me not to like a Herbin ink, and this one's right  up there. 

[Tas]

Yummy

[yazeh]

Good one dill! 

I'm not into to greys, unless a pencil but I have to admit gris de houle sounds more mysterious than swell grey...

 

 

 

 

 

[PithyProlix]

 

Great review and handwriting, as always. 

 

I prefer inks with a strong grey component for writing but still with hue and don't like neutral greys ... but this one is just the right tint for me, at least with the pen/paper combinations you used, and looks good with all varieties of line widths you show here. It's very attractive.

[namrehsnoom]

Thank you for a great review - very informative. I like the fact that this Gris De Houle from Jacques Herbin is more saturated than the J. Herbin Gris Nuage I have been playing with recently. Works better with finer nibs. 

Unfortunately, Gris de Houle shares some shortcomings with Gris Nuage: both have a tendency to spread & feather on paper types that don’t have hard surfaces. I suspect that they share the same DNA (coming from the same ink maker). This makes me use them less often than I otherwise would.

[LizEF]

Thanks, Dill!  Very informative review.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this performs in my EF reviews (whenever we get there).

[A Smug Dill]

Thanks, everyone.

 

@namrehsnoom It was partly your great review of Herbin Gris Nuage that inspired me to review this ink; I haven't felt at all motivated to do a review for a while. The other reason for the timing is that a friend on here asked me about this ink, and I wanted to give her the chance to make an informed decision whether she wants to pick it up at A$10 a 50ml bottle while she still has the (rapidly closing) opportunity to do so.