Krishna Kolkata: Vibrant Blue with Purple/Magenta Sheen

[Matthew TWP]

 

I ordered this one from India last month because it's not available in the USA yet, but it's the 3rd ink in Krishna's "India" series (I've also posted Mumbai here, and thought about posting Dilli but have completely failed to actually do so). Anyway, when I ordered this one, the photos online were sketchy, but I saw that the label on the box was purpleish blue, so I was expecting a purple ink. In fact, it's a vibrant blue ink, and some of you have probably noticed by now that I'm a fan of vibrant blues, so that's just fine with me. The sheen is strong enough that the overall effect is often more purple than blue, which explains the color of the label.

 

 

I do like the label art on this box, but I sorta wish that they had stuck with the same style for all of the inks in the series. No big deal, though.

 

 

I swatched this ink in my variety of different papered swatch books, but most of them didn't provide very different results. Here are four of them: a Rhodia plain, Cosmo Air Light (warmer toned paper), Tomoe River 52gsm, and of course, the standard Col-O-Ring.

 

 

With all the sheen, I was having trouble getting a good read on the color of the base ink, so I decided that I would dilute it with some water at a few different ratios. Once it was diluted 1:2, it didn't really seem to make a difference whether I went any further, but it was already done. That's what you're seeing above the big swatch below:

 

 

Now, as for actually using the ink... it's a lot like the other Krishna inks that I've used. It feels a little thick to me, but it writes smoothly and is very well behaved on low quality paper. The ink is on the dry side of medium. Unlike a lot of sheening inks, I was happy to find that this one gave me some pretty decent shading as well as moderately light sheen in just about every pen that I used. After giving it a modest dry time, the ink dried completely and didn't smear (as long as my hands were dry, of course). I didn't detect any water resistance at all.

 

Here are some writing samples on Tomoe River 68gsm (plain) and Rhodia (ruled) with a variety of nib sizes, from double broad to fine.

 

 

 

 

Hope that some of you find this useful!

[LizEF]

Thanks for another fabulous review.  Your pictures are so lovely they're almost enough to make me want the ink!   But that blue is just too blue for me.

[Matthew TWP]

24 minutes ago, LizEF said:

But that blue is just too blue for me.

There's no such thing as too blue for me 🙂  

[LizEF]

23 minutes ago, Matthew TWP said:

There's no such thing as too blue for me 🙂  

  We who live in the murk respect your right to enjoy too much blue!

[yazeh]

That looks really nice in double broad/ broad medium. Thankfully I'm off sheen..Thanks for the review thumb

 

@LizEF do you like murky blues then?

[LizEF]

44 minutes ago, yazeh said:

@LizEF do you like murky blues then?

If you consider blue-blacks and blue-greys (or greyish blues) murky, then yes!

[yazeh]

20 minutes ago, LizEF said:

If you consider blue-blacks and blue-greys (or greyish blues) murky, then yes!

 

 

[Tas]

Super review. Thank you.
If they ever make a poster out of the artwork I'm be in that queue to buy one . . . 🥰