The Ama-iro (Sky-blue) Experience.

[Rroberrt]

What a lovely experience, writing with this ink. To watch each word, each letter, grow on your paper.  The characters actually revealing what looks like a texture, not just a trail of pretty ink  (altho’ the color itself has a charm, and no feathering - not even with a glass).:)   A ‘texture’ specially evident perhaps in the more substantial CI. 

 

Watching each letter/word develop slows down my writing enough for me to enjoy the shape and shading, - irrespective of the content - savoring each letter.

 

And, my goodness! Just look at that result: One little Ama-iro step towards a perfect page.

[Mysterious Mose]

A few years ago, I was at FPH, wanting some inks.

 

The salesman pushed Pilot Iroshizuku ama-iro (Sky Blue) and I bought it.  I'm very happy with it.  I have a Waterman Expert II which pauses and halts too often.  It works fine with this ink!  As I understand it, this is a wet ink and the pen is a dry pen.

 

👍

[maclink]

I have a couple bottles of Ama-Iro but give Kon Peki the edge.  Another very interesting one that’s close is the Pelikan Edelstein Topaz. Blue is my favourite ink colour BTW. 🙃

[Rroberrt]

15 hours ago, Mysterious Mose said:

A few years ago, I was at FPH, wanting some inks.

 

…I which pauses and halts too often.  It works fine with this ink!  As I understand it, this is a wet ink and the pen is a dry pen.

 

👍

Pen-paper-ink is not an easy combination to keep tabs on: While trying out the Safari/Ama-iro combination on Clairefontain paper, it was at first too dry - but the real culprit was a bad habit of that particular pen to go dry when half full. Bringing the piston down half-way took care of dryness. Which also brought to mind how much harder it is to push the pen against a ‘dry’ combination than when it is wet and free-flowing.

[Rroberrt]

8 hours ago, maclink said:

I have a couple bottles of Ama-Iro but give Kon Peki the edge.  Another very interesting one that’s close is the Pelikan Edelstein Topaz. Blue is my favourite ink colour BTW. 🙃

Thanks. I’m looking forward to trying them.

 

I was not a fan of blue to begin with, but I’m happily finding out that there is more to “Blue”, than just the jean’s blue that I knew. Thanks for the tip. (I see Kon-Peki is #1 in Iroshizuko sales.)

 

BTW, Is it my eyes, - or am I sometimes seeing “Sky Green”, instead of “Sky Blue”?

[senzen]

Ama Iro went from "let's give it a try" to a quest to find a pen that makes it shine, like for Kon Peki. Turned out to be a palladium, steel nibed EF Studio. A dark pen with a light ink makes more sense to me visually but there you go.

[Rroberrt]

Oh Dear! Thank you, but now a new worry.  I’m wondering whether Ama-Iro is showing up at her best in a bright red shiny Safari?  

 

btw Is there a general consensus on whether a particular ink is feminine or masculine?  Or is that, like my mind, a dangerous place to go alone?

[Muncle]

On 7/17/2021 at 3:21 PM, Rroberrt said:

 

btw Is there a general consensus on whether a particular ink is feminine or masculine?  Or is that, like my mind, a dangerous place to go alone?

Strong opinions held? Sure

Consensus? No.

 

Speaking as a male who likes purple, grey drizzzly inks, and lavender.

 

One of the more masculine men in my small circle asked me recently about my glittery inks.

 

Write your ink with pride, and good luck finding a pen to make Kon peki shine.

[Rroberrt]

On 7/18/2021 at 9:11 PM, Muncle said:

Speaking as a male who likes purple, grey drizzzly inks, and lavender.

 

On 7/18/2021 at 9:11 PM, Muncle said:

Write your ink with pride, and good luck finding a pen to make Kon peki shine.

It’s hard to feel that you are a Renaissance Man and a failure at the same time. But woe is me!  On the one hand, I am now able to  honestly regard purple ink as having its share of beauty - far, very far from previous convictions. But on the other hand, my appreciation of the order of colors, shown below, is sadly lacking, as my dear wife has before mentioned.

 

Having sampled many of the Iroshizuku colours, I hesitate to admit to my order for favorite of the day:

1) Tsuki-jo  (Deep Teal)

2)  Syo Ro   (Pine Tree Dew)

3)  Ama-iro  (Sky Blue)

4)  Kon Peki  (Cerulean Blue.

 

As you can see, altho’ my order is of no interest to another soul, I clearly failed to put the world’s favorite, Kon Peki, at the top………… I will quietly slink off - until tomorrow, when my resilient ego will bring me back, only to trip me up once again.

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

Another Kon-Peki fan here.  I prefer it over Ama-iro, which it just edges out.

But I also really like Tsuyu-kusa (which doesn't seem to get the same love around here as some of the other Iroshizuku inks).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Arkanabar]

When I want blue, I want a pure deep cyan, with no trace of purple, and very little or no green.  Ama-Iro is nowhere near deep enough, looking more like a highlighter ink to me.  Noodler's Blue is my Essential Blue.

 

Noodler's V-Mail Midway Blue is my happy color.  My wife bought it to match one of her pens, a Nib Creaper in Truk Lagoon.  She's an accumulator, to be honest, and she bought most of the pens and inks in our home.  With the exception of her Platinum Plaisir, all of her fountain pens dry out.  And her Nib Creapers are probably the worst.  But it could almost be a ringer for Ama-Iro.

 

Back when I thought that Iro Yama-Guri might be The Essential Brown, I sent my wife a link for it, so she might buy me some for Christmas.  That link wound up sending her to Ku-Jaku instead, and that's what she bought.  It did not fit The Essentials, and so I rarely used it.  But a couple of years later, she bought me a Pelikan M205 F in Aqua, and ... the ink matched the pen, and they worked together, and both were ideal gifts, which is to say, things I loved (especially together), that I would never have bought for myself.  That M205 is now always on my desk, inked with Ku-Jaku and used for all the billets-doux I write for her.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

[MHBru]

Kon peki is unquestionably the ink I must always have.  For Years its all that went in my blue stripe M800.... Except this summer when it called out for ama iro ... And it's such a perfect summer ink.   I love it... As well 😀

[effrafax]

12 hours ago, Arkanabar said:

"When I want blue, I want a pure deep cyan, with no trace of purple, and very little or no green."

 

I hate to be pedantic (which naturally means I'm going to be), but cyan as a secondary colour of light, is 50-50 blue and green, so if there's no green, it ain't cyan.

Dark cyan is teal.   Other shades are your turquoise, aqua and the like.

What you're talking about is ... blue.

 

[Rroberrt]

On 8/8/2021 at 4:44 PM, Arkanabar said:

, I sent my wife a link for it, so she might buy me some for Christmas. 

Thank you. I let my wife read the above, but so far …. you might almost think I didn’t need another ink/pen. Huh!

[Rroberrt]

18 hours ago, MHBru said:

perfect summer ink.

Yes!  That’s exactly the word I used in my journal.

[Rroberrt]

11 hours ago, effrafax said:

What you're talking about is ... blue.

 

‘A “Blue” by any other name’… may shine beyond our ken.

From folks at FPN we learn…’depends upon the pen.

[effrafax]

On 8/10/2021 at 7:38 AM, Rroberrt said:

 

‘A “Blue” by any other name’… may shine beyond our ken.

From folks at FPN we learn…’depends upon the pen.

 

Too true, but I don't think a different pen can add green to a blue ink!

 

[inkstainedruth]

A pen can't (well, unless you don't sufficient clean a previous fill of green ink out, that is ).  But paper CAN make a vast difference: in my test notebook, Waterman Mysterious Blue was a dark blue-black; in another notebook, it was more of a blue-green; and on paper someone had at a local pen club meeting a few years ago it looked like a slightly blue leaning GREEN!  People were asking what the "green" ink was, and I was going "NOT green -- It's WMB because I know what's in this pen at the moment!"

"Mysterious" is a good name for that ink....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[IlikeInksandIcannotlie]

14 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

But paper CAN make a vast difference:

I seem to be plagued with paper that kills the blue in blue black. MB Midnight Blue, for me, is a grey with a touch of blue, that then fades to grey, and Kaweco midnight blue is bluish when wet, but quickly turns purple- grey when dry.

[inkstainedruth]

Some blue-black inks have an iron gall content to them, and that might account for your experience with MB Midnight Blue -- it's not the paper so much as the oxidation of the IG content.  Mind you, I'm not sure if that is an IG ink or not.  Part of that, I think is because a lot of blue dyes are not lightfast.

But yeah, paper can do weird stuff to ink colors -- my testing journals are a bunch of cheapie Piccadilly sketch pads, and the paper in those (which is pretty absorbent) is awful and also really messes with the chromatography of the ink in general.  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth