Noodler's 1984 v2 : It's Black?

[Matthew TWP]

 

This isn't the ink review that I was planning on posting today, but this bottle arrived early and my other bottle was delayed, so I'll get to it tomorrow.

 

 

I missed the initial release of Noodler's 1984 about 6 months ago. By the time I knew it existed, it was sold out everywhere, and I'm not willing to pay Ebay prices for it. But I did manage to get the second version (2 of 3, the bottle claims) while Dromgoole's still had it in stock, and it gave me an excuse to order another bottle from Dromgooles that I was interested in. The first version of 1984 (if reddit photos are to be believed) was something like a dark red-purple, I think.

 

This one appears to be just black, pretty much. Or maybe you'd call it a dark grey. It has more purple undertones than Noodler's standard bulletproof black, which leans towards brown (or green?). However, it has the sharp odor that has been characteristic of many of Noodler's more recent inks, which doesn't bother me but might bother some.

 

 

 

Here I swabbed a few of my blackish colors on the same piece of paper, just because I was playing around with them. The Noodler's pinkish/reddish undertones show up here, and where it's thin, it looks a bit like Diamine Earl Grey, but I think that Birmingham's Coking Coal is a closer match most of the time.

 

 

Many of these waterproof Noodler's inks are horribly behaved (see my video about the worst ones on Graphilo paper, here), but I am happy to say that 1984 is much better behaved. It doesn't feather or bleed badly on any of my favorite papers, and it even seems to do just fine on my printer paper. It's a wet ink, though, and it also spreads a little bit on some papers, but again, not to the same degree as inks like Noodler's Monkey Hanger.

 

 

Very black on this Tomoe River in a very wet pen.

 

With a dryer medium nib, though, there's some shading and the ink is more of a grey.

 

 

 

Also tested on some ruled Rhodia paper:

 

 

 

 

In my original tests on Rhodia paper, 1984 was almost completely waterproof; I didn't even get any color lifting when I swabbed it with water. However, when I tried the same ink on Canson Watercolor Paper and then on Tomoe River (68gsm), there was some movement of the ink... more than standard Noodler's black, even. So, it won't be a great choice for artists who want to use washes on it.

 

 

[RockFL]

Thank you for this excellent review of a very interesting ink. Nice work demonstrating the different results from different pens. 

[Matthew TWP]

1 hour ago, RockFL said:

Thank you for this excellent review of a very interesting ink. Nice work demonstrating the different results from different pens. 

Thanks! Glad you found it useful 🙂

[yazeh]

Thank you so much for your in depth reviews. I truly enjoy them  If I didn't know better, this look like a darker Scabiosa with a fine/ dry  nib. One question: Was the ink completely dry when you did the water test  or was it right after it was dry to the touch? 

 

[Matthew TWP]

6 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Was the ink completely dry when you did the water test  or was it right after it was dry to the touch? 

 

There are two different tests in the images above. The one with the two inks on Canson paper was the quicker one; I wrote with the 1984, then the Noodler's Black, set a timer for 15 minutes, and then ran my brush across them. 15 minutes seemed like a practical amount of time to test, if people want to use it as a working ink.

 

In the other one I just swabbed the "medium nib" sample on my Tomoe River 68gsm writing sample, and it had a much longer dry time. I wrote those samples last evening, then photographed them this morning, then as I was posting this and did the Canson test, I got curious and decided to see what would happen with that sample, so it had something like 16 hours of dry time, give or take a couple of hours.

[TSherbs]

I appreciate this kind of comparison. Very useful!

[Matthew TWP]

1 hour ago, TSherbs said:

I appreciate this kind of comparison. Very useful!

 

Thanks!

[yazeh]

8 hours ago, Matthew TWP said:

 

There are two different tests in the images above. The one with the two inks on Canson paper was the quicker one; I wrote with the 1984, then the Noodler's Black, set a timer for 15 minutes, and then ran my brush across them. 15 minutes seemed like a practical amount of time to test, if people want to use it as a working ink.

 

In the other one I just swabbed the "medium nib" sample on my Tomoe River 68gsm writing sample, and it had a much longer dry time. I wrote those samples last evening, then photographed them this morning, then as I was posting this and did the Canson test, I got curious and decided to see what would happen with that sample, so it had something like 16 hours of dry time, give or take a couple of hours.

Thank you for the clarification. This helps a lot