Krishna Caramel : Mostly Orange, Sometimes Brown

[Matthew TWP]

I ordered five bottles of ink from Krishna's India shop a few weeks ago (one of them wasn't available in the USA yet), and since autumn was coming up, I ordered 3 inks that I'd consider "fall colors", including this one: Krishna Caramel, from the "Super Rich" series. It comes in the typical 20ml Krishna bottle and costs $8 or so, unless you're in India, in which case it costs about $3.

 

 

 

I'm not really a fan of orange inks, so I don't have many to compare this with. The hue of this ink does depend very heavily on the paper and how heavily the ink flows; it ranges from a pretty average pumpkin orange to a medium brown. So far, I've managed to get the brown appearance when writing with a broad or double broad nib with good flow.

 

 

No problems with feathering. I did get a little bleed through with my heaviest swabs on Tomoe River and on HP printer paper, but never when writing. No hard starts. All in all, pretty well behaved.... except that there were some dark floaties in my bottle. Not sure what they were. Dried ink bits? I don't know. I haven't had any issues with clogging, but it I did wonder what was up with those things.

 

Update: I initially wrote that this ink didn't offer any water resistance. In fact, that's only true of the orange part of this ink. It seems that there are a couple of dyes involved here, and the one that produces the darker brown shading is also waterproof. So, if you write a sentence and dip it in water, most of it will wash away cleanly, but the darkest shaded areas will remain. 

 

Oh, I should also mention... having left an inked pen sitting around unused for a couple of weeks, this ink didn't grow into spikey crystals all over the nib. I've had that happen with some orange and light green inks in the past, but not here (yet).

 

 

This time, I kept my writing samples pretty basic. I did a double broad and a medium on Tomoe River (plain) 68gsm, which is warm toned, and the same two nibs on Rhodia (ruled).

 

 

 

 

Overall, I really like the ink in a broad nib pen (or really, anything that puts down a lot of ink), but I can take it or leave it with a dry pen.

 

Hope someone finds this useful 🙂

[lapis]

Nice Autumn colour. Seems to be very changeable which is also indicative of other Krishnas (IMO). I guess I'm in the same boat -- I'm not all that much a fan of oranges or browns, but an orange-brown or a brown-orange, now that's something to look at. 😊

[namrehsnoom]

Beautiful review. Thank you. 

What I like about this ink is that it saturates towards brown, and then it looks really nice. I agree with you that this orange looks best in the broad nibs, where it gets its somewhat darker character. And the shading is a stunner! Strong and heavy, but still not too harsh, and with well-balanced contrast between light and dark parts. 

 

PS: if you ever find out what the floaters are, please let us know 😉

 

[mizgeorge]

What a lovely review - thank you from me too

 

I love orange inks, but tend to veer away from the most saturated, but this one seems to have retained a lot of shading - and the colour is lovely. I'd love to know where it sits in comparison to their Autumn Orange and Candle Day.

 

Can I also just add how impressed I am at your range of swatch books! 

[LizEF]

Thanks for the review!  Your photos are always so perfect.   I kind of like these burnt orange colors, more than bright oranges (though I make an exception for Akkerman Oranje Boven).  I'd guess the floaters are dried pigment flaking from the cap into the bottle - at least, I hope that's what they are!

 

1 hour ago, mizgeorge said:

Can I also just add how impressed I am at your range of swatch books!

Right!?   That's a serious collection.  (Almost enough to make me blow money I don't have to start over - with time I don't have, and inks I no longer have, and.... are you sensing a theme?  )

 

[yazeh]

You reviews are so visually refreshing. Thank you so much. Now I have a craving for a pumpkin pie

[lapis]

But we do have Diamine's Pumpkin, don't we?

[langere]

Looks very nice!  I wonder how it compares to Diamine Autumn Oak.

 

Erick

[Matthew TWP]

5 hours ago, mizgeorge said:

Can I also just add how impressed I am at your range of swatch books! 

 

Thanks! I make them for the papers that I use frequently, which is a lot more helpful than using a Col-O-Ring all the time, for me. I have my limits, though... when I make a new swatch book like the Cosmo Air Light one that I made last month, I only swatch new inks in it, unless I'm already re-swatching an old ink for some other reason. So, when I do an ink color comparison, I only use my Col-O-Ring, since it's my oldest and has everything. Anyway, since I make them myself, they're usually pretty cheap. 

 

2 hours ago, lapis said:

ut we do have Diamine's Pumpkin, don't we?

 

I have a bottle of Diamine Pumpkin, but no Autumn Oak. That one is on my list for my next Cult Pens order 🙂 I'll add another shot with the Pumpkin later on. 

 

(I wrote this before my cup of tea and wasn't awake enough to understand humor yet).

Edited September 24, 2021 by Matthew TWP
Written Before Tea

[vtgt]

Diamine Pumpkin is mostly orange, sometimes red. Too hot to be truly relaxing.

[Matthew TWP]

Just a quick update to this. I originally made the mistake of saying that this ink is not water resistant. As it turns out, the orange dye is not water resistant, but the brown portion is pretty waterproof.

 

If you take a writing sample and dip it in running water, the orange color disappears almost immediately, leaving behind a browner tone. Where the ink was light (and mostly orange), that brown is just a shadow... hardly visible at  all, but where the ink was thick, it remains as a visible orange brown. No matter how long I soak the paper, that part of ink remains.