Pelikan Brown

[SquelchB]

I was quite interested in trying out a brown ink lately. Did a little bit of search and found out, that the cheapest brown ink around is Pelikan. The color seemed quite nice on the swashes I found on TWD, so I went for it. It arrived few days ago and I of course stuffed my Pelikan M100 with M nib full of it as soon as I could. Well, here is what I think about it after several days of intense use and about 20 pages written with it. I also loaded it in Reform 1745 with (probably) XF nib, which is significantly dryer than the Pel.

 

Color shade: 8/10

The color is quite bright and intense brown leaning towards orange and copper. Aesthetically very, very pleasing. Again, I admit that's my first brown ink and it's very individiual, but I like it - therefore the high mark.

 

Color intensity: 3/10

This is something completely else. Why the shade is beautiful, the ink is very thin and leaves very light line in a dryer pen. In pen that writes wet the intensity is satisfactory, however nothing outstanding either.

 

Color consistency in line: 4/10

The line is significantly darker when you start and finish the line. In other words, droplet of ink is much darker than the line, which doesn't look good in writing. But it's an effect of the ink being thinner, so everything has its pros and cons.

 

Ink flow: 10/10

The upside of low saturated ink is very good flow. If you have a very dry pen, Pelikans would be the inks for you. I like when the pen leaves the wet line on the paper and this ink fulfils this craving entirely.

 

Creeping: 8/10

While using the pen normally, there haven't been problems with ink creep. However after I filled the pen I found ink on the nib once or twice. Therefore I can't give the full credit here.

 

Bleeding: 3/10

I use quite thin and cheap paper, however compared to my writing with blue Quink, the Pelikan bleeds significantly more. The advice here would be to use higher quality paper or thinner nib. But it bleeds - only three points here.

 

Price: 9/10

So far it's the cheapest quality ink I found on sale here. 30 ml (1 oz) bottle is half the price of 2 oz Quink, which is about equal, but other inks like Waterman are a lot more expensive.

 

Overall: 6,42/10

This ink definitely has its upsides and downsides. The upsides are low price, safeness and nice color shade. The downsides are low color intensity and other things, all caused by the ink being so thin. But all in all, this is not a bad ink.

 

And what ink review would it be without a writing sample? Here it goes.

 

 

 

 

As I said, this is my first ink review, so I'd be grateful for some critic and recommendations how to improve.

[punch]

Nice review! This looks like a brown that I would like to try.

[Wino In Training]

I have been using this ink for addressing thankyou notes, and some general note-taking as well. I agree that it can leave a bit of a light line in a drier pen. However I played with it in a Lamy 1.5mm italic nib - no dryness issues there! In that nib it would bleed right through cheap paper, but on Rhodia it came out great. Lots of nice shading, ranging from the more copper-end of things that you would get from a drier nib through to a deep, rich chestnut.

 

One interesting thing about this ink: it reacts strangely to Moleskine paper. The wet line looks great, but the colour dries to a very green-tinted brown. It looks great on white non-Moleskine paper though.

 

It definitely doesn't have the lubricative properties of some other inks.

[kaseygirl]

I have found a near perfect combination with Pelikan Brown and a medium point Pelikano. They really work well together.

[SquelchB]

I have been using this ink for addressing thankyou notes, and some general note-taking as well. I agree that it can leave a bit of a light line in a drier pen. However I played with it in a Lamy 1.5mm italic nib - no dryness issues there! In that nib it would bleed right through cheap paper, but on Rhodia it came out great. Lots of nice shading, ranging from the more copper-end of things that you would get from a drier nib through to a deep, rich chestnut.

 

One interesting thing about this ink: it reacts strangely to Moleskine paper. The wet line looks great, but the colour dries to a very green-tinted brown. It looks great on white non-Moleskine paper though.

 

It definitely doesn't have the lubricative properties of some other inks.

Actually, shading is more of shortcoming to me. Yes, it is interesting, but sometimes it just looks weird. Inks are very individual thingies

[kudzu]

And I love this brown because of the shading!

[Pjake]

Bought a bottle...a bit to copper for me......

 

Not bad...but not Havana Brown...

 

Peter

Edited April 21, 2008 by Pjake