a quick and easy mix to use up your Pelikan Royal blue...

[sansenri]

With time I've collected a number of Pelikan Royal blue 4001 bottles, often coming with purchases of Pelikan pens.

It's an ink I have always liked, both the colour and the way it behaves, and it's often a first choice in vintage pens.

Sometimes it does  seem to fade on some paper and does make you wish it was slightly more saturated.

I have often concentrated Royal blue to get a more saturated look, and it works well.

But as I do like to try some mixing, I have often also tried mixing it with other inks.

 

After mixing with black to experiment some blue-black, since I'm really very fond of blue inks, I have also tried mixing with other blue inks.

The specific scope here, was not so much finding a specific target colour, but rather using the largest possible quantity of Royal blue (as to reduce the stock, and have different blue colours available).

The resulting mix, result of just a first attempt, not only is to my liking in terms of colour, but also it behaves essentially as Royal Blue (since most of it is Royal blue...) and is also rather cheap, considering the amount of added ink is small (and in my specific case the Royal blue stock was there already!)

 

Here is the "Royal Sargasso Mix"

Pelikan Royal blue 4001 4 parts + Diamine Sargasso Sea 1 part

 

 

On this rather glossy paper (of unknown brand) which shows ink colours rather well I have compared it to Diamine Sapphire and Iroshizuku Asa Gao.

 

The blue tone is rather similar to Asa Gao, although Asa Gao remains slightly lighter and more vibrant, while my mix is darker and a faint touch less purple.

The mix is clearly less vibrant than both Asa Gao and Sapphire, but that's usually normal as mixing ink always reduces saturation.

 

Sapphire is very clearly more purple than both the other two.

 

The mix is well tested, I have made and used several batches of this mix (I usually mix about 5 ml total at a time in a small reclosable vial) and have experienced no problems whatsoever, the mix is stable, clear, very easily washable (as to be expected) and as mentioned, in terms of behaviour, behaves almost the same way as Royal blue.

On very glossy paper the mix shows some sheen.

 

 

what is missing in my pictures is direct comparison with Royal blue! but I might do that shortly...