Ink Review: Diamine Blaze Orange

View fullsize

Diamine Blaze Orange. Click to embiggen.

Blaze orange is well known to Americans as the color of construction barrels, traffic cones, and hunting caps. It’s a color designed to provide significant contrast to the environment – critical when dodging traffic during rush hour on a busy highway or when creeping through the woods with dozens of other hunters, all of whom have high-powered rifles in hand. In those contexts, the color is aggressively monotone, obnoxious, and prosaic, but when embodied in ink form by Diamine, it becomes delightfully dynamic, engaging, and lyrical.

Its most laudable characteristic is its extremely high degree of shading, which is evident even in fine nib pens. It creates the impression of a flickering flame that dances directly off the page. My one quibble with the ink is that it is low in saturation, which, combined with the color, makes it hard to read on cream-colored paper. It looks good, though, on off-white paper and really comes to life on bright-white paper.

Blaze Orange is generally pleasant to write with. Like most Diamine ink, it is neither especially dry nor especially wet. It writes very easily on fountain pen-friendly paper like Midori, but doesn’t do much to make paper with a bit of tooth feel smooth.

In my experience, Diamine ink performs consistently across the different colors of the line: it feathers a bit on absorbent, un-sized paper, and it behaves admirably on coated, ink-resistant paper. Blaze Orange behaved as expected on the five paper types I used to test it: cheap, office copier paper; Staples Bagasse notepad; Rhodia Bloc pad; Midori MD notebook; and Canson XL Mix Media notebook.

Paper	Dry Time	Bleed-Through	Show-Through	Feathering
Copier	1 second	Yes	Medium	Low
Bagasse	3 seconds	Yes	Medium	Low
Rhodia	15 seconds	No	Low	None
Midori	10 seconds	No	Low	None
Canson	15 seconds	No	None	None

View fullsize

Diamine Blaze Orange water test. Click to embiggen.

Blaze Orange exhibits very little in the way of water resistance. When I ran a wet finger across the page for the the smear test, I left a giant orange smudge behind. In the drip test, where I let a drop of water soak on the paper before blotting it up, the ink fared no better – the affected ink lifted cleanly from the page, leaving only a soft, orange haze behind. During the soak test, in which I ran the page under a stream of water for 30 seconds, the ink almost completely washed away, fading to a ghost of its original self. This is not an ink that one should use to address an envelope or anything else that might be exposed to the elements.

Diamine Blaze Orange bottle

Diamine ink is available in 30ml plastic and an 80ml glass bottles, both of which are utilitarian and slightly boring in appearance. The 30ml plastic bottle has a neck that is very small in diameter, and I found that some of my larger pens would not fit all the way in, which made getting to the ink a bit of a challenge. Though you may wish to go with the smaller volume to try out a new color, my recommendation would be to go for the larger bottle due to its superior usability.

Blaze Orange isn’t likely to be an everyday ink for most people, but it is a pretty amazing one. I highly recommend it if you’re the kind of fountain pen user who keeps several pens inked at once, or if you just happen to be in a vibrant state of mind.

Diamine Blaze Orange is available from multiple sources, including:

• Jet Pens - http://www.jetpens.com/Diamine-Fountain-Pen-Ink-80-ml-Blaze-Orange/pd/7725
• Goulet Pens - http://www.gouletpens.com/diamine-blaze-orange-80ml-bottled-fountain-pen-ink/p/D7035

Review notes: the handwritten portion of the review was created on 160 gsm, acid free, mixed media paper from the Canson XL line. The broad lines were made using a Pilot Parallel pen with a 3.8mm calligraphy nib. The fine lines were created using a Visconti Homo Sapiens fitted with an EF palladium nib.

Ink Review: Diamine Meadow

I’m not a connoisseur of green ink. I’ve reviewed J. Herbin’s Vert Olive and Vert Empire, and I have Iroshizuku Shinryoku sitting on my shelf, but none of them have spent much time in my pens. Over the years, I’ve reviewed plenty of red and blue ink, and I love a good purple, but green isn’t a color that captured my imagination – until I tried Diamine Meadow.

There’s no mystery in the inspiration behind the name of the ink – no foreign (to English speakers) language to parse or obscure tidbit to research – only the verdant, vibrant, green of an English meadow. The ink is a lovely, moderately saturated yellow-green that exhibits a very high degree of shading. Like most Diamine ink, it is neither especially dry nor especially wet. It is pleasant to write with, but doesn’t go out of its way to make the pen glide across the page.

In my experience, Diamine ink performs consistently across the different colors of the line: it feathers on absorbent, un-sized paper, and it behaves admirably on coated, ink-resistant paper. Meadow behaved as expected on the five paper types I used to test it: cheap, office copier paper; Staples Bagasse notepad; Rhodia Bloc pad; Midori MD notebook; and Canson XL Mix Media notebook.

Paper	Dry Time	Bleed-Through	Show-Through	Feathering
Copier	1 second	Yes	Medium	Moderate
Bagasse	3 seconds	Yes	Medium	Moderate
Rhodia	8 seconds	No	Low	None
Midori	15 seconds	No	Low	None
Canson	20 seconds	No	None	None

While an actual meadow is invigorated by a healthy rain, growing bolder and more verdant as a result, Diamine Meadow is affected in precisely the opposite fashion. The smear test, in which I run a wet finger over the paper, produced a lovely yellow-green smudge, obliterating the lines on the page. In the drop test, in which I leave water on the paper for 10 seconds before blotting it up, the ink lifted easily from the page, leaving a ghostly haze behind.

The soak test, in which I run water over the paper in an attempt to wash the ink away, completely obliterated my writing; only a hint of color remained. In fact, I cut the test short for fear of washing the ink away entirely.

Diamine ink is available in 30ml plastic and an 80ml glass bottles, both of which are utilitarian and slightly boring in appearance. The 30ml plastic bottle has a neck that is very small in diameter, and I found that some of my larger pens would not fit all the way in, which made getting to the ink a bit of a challenge. Though you may wish to go with the smaller volume to try out a new color, my recommendation would be to go for the larger bottle due to its superior usability.

Diamine Meadow is gorgeous and I’ve had a fantastic time using it. It looks phenomenal flowing from an extra-fine nib, a flex nib, and a super-wide calligraphy pen. It’s a tremendous value for the cost – 80ml for about $15 – which is good, because the shading that it displays seems to compel serious amounts doodling.

Diamine Meadow is available from multiple sources, including:

• Jet Pens
• Goulet Pens

Review notes: the handwritten portion of the review was created on 160 gsm, acid free, mixed media paper from the Canson XL line. The broad lines were made using a Pilot Parallel pen with a 3.8mm calligraphy nib. The fine lines were created using a Noodler’s Konrad fitted with a steel flex nib.

Ink Review: Iroshizuku Tsukushi

Iroshizuku Tsukushi. Click to enlarge.

Iroshizuku is a line of ink produced by Pilot under their high-end Namiki brand. The natural landscape and plants of Japan inspire the colors in the line, resulting in some of the most interesting and unique ink around. Some of my earliest reviews were of Iroshizuku ink: Yu-Yake, a delightful burnt orange; Momiji, an incredible, if subtle red; Yama-Budo, a ripe, juicy purple; Kiri-Same, the color of storm clouds in a bottle; and Kon-Peki, a deep and intoxicating ocean blue. To mark my recent return to ink reviews after a two-year hiatus, I just reviewed Asa-Gao, which is a daily-writer-worthy vibrant blue.

Returning to this line of ink made me remember just how much I love it. I’ve collected lots of ink over the years, which means that the average tenure of any particular color in my daily writer is probably one month, if not less. As a result, many of the Iroshizuku inks that I collected early on have sat, lonely and unused, for a few years. So, when I went to choose the next ink in my rotation, I picked an Iroshizuku ink that I had owned for years but never reviewed: Tsukushi.

Tsukushi means “horsetail” in Japanese, and can refer to either the horsetail plant or to a wooden stick with a burned tip that’s used to create under-drawings for artwork. According to Pilot, the ink is “a soft brown, like a young horsetail awaiting the coming of spring,” which I assume refers to the plant, as the idea of a burnt stick waiting around for spring can only be explained by artistic bears coming out of hibernation and then sleepily marching into the studio for a quick sketch before wandering off to hunt salmon.

At any rate, Tsukushi is a medium brown with a hint of earthy red. It’s moderately saturated, and does exhibit nice shading with both a fine nib and a wide stub nib. As a wet writing ink, it provides sufficient lubrication across a variety writing surfaces.

As a line, Iroshizuku ink behaves best on high quality, ink resistant paper like Clairefontaine, Rhodia, or Midori. Because most of the colors are wet-writers, they have a tendency to feather on cheap, absorbent paper like bagasse or copier paper. Tsukishi squarely fits the pattern, as seen by its behavior on the various papers I tested it on.

Paper	Dry Time	Feathering	Show Through	Bleed Through
Rhodia	12 seconds	None	Medium	None
Midori	15 seconds	None	Medium	None
Bagasse	3 seconds	High	High	High
Copier	2 seconds	Medium	High	High

Iroshizuku Tsukushi water test. Click to enlarge.

Tsukushi held up better than I expected during tests of its water resistance. On the smear test, in which I drag a wet finger across the page, the ink certainly smeared – the red compounds in the ink splayed across the page – but the underlying lines still remained legible. On the drip test, in which I let a few drops of water sit on the page before blotting them up, the ink bled slightly and some came up off the page, but it still remained readable.

On the soak test, in which I ran the page under a stream of water for half a minute, Tsukushi tenaciously clung to the page. While a considerable portion of the ink was washed away, the lines remained clearly visible; at least some amount of the ink appears to have bonded to the paper, preventing it from being fully removed. While nowhere near bulletproof, it was a solid performance

Iroshizuku Tsukushi bottle. Click to enlarge.

Iroshizuku bottles remain one of the loveliest designs in the field. Each beautiful, 50ml bottle brilliantly showcases the color of the ink it contains. They are quite solid and the thick bottom gives each one a surprising amount of heft. Also, an indentation in the bottom of the bottle is intended to aid in soaking up the last few drops of ink. These are bottles that deserve a place of pride on top of a desk.

Brown inks have not been in my regular rotation for the past couple of years, but my time with Tsukushi is making me rethink that – especially as we head into autumn here in the US. It’s well-behaved ink with nice shading in a color that I haven’t yet found elsewhere. It’s not cheap – Iroshizuku ink runs about $28 (US) per bottle – but from its time in my pen, I’d say that it’s worth it.

Iroshizuku Tsukushi is available from:

• Goulet Pens
• Jet Pens

Review notes: The hand-written portions of the review were created on 80 g/m2 Rhodia paper from a No. 18 Bloc pad. The flourished italic script was written using a Monteverde Prima with a 1.1mm steel stub nib, while the remainder of the text was written using a Visconti Homo Sapiens fitted with an EF palladium nib.

Ink Review: Iroshizuku Asagao

I’d like to begin by offering a hearty apology to the fine folks at Jet Pens, who sent me a bottle of Iroshizuku Asagao all the way back in October of 2013. At the time, I thought that I could sneak in an ink review in the middle of my EMBA program. That was a gross over-estimation of time and ability on my part. I managed to get the ink samples created, but the review itself never materialized – always de-prioritized in favor of papers, presentations, and projects. I’m finally back, though. My brain has recovered, and, for my first foray back into the reviewing realm, I’m delivering the long-overdue review of Iroshizuku Asagao.

The morning glory was first identified in China, where it was used for medicinal purposes. It was introduced to Japan in the 9th century, where it became cultivated for its ornamental properties. It became such a popular flower in Japan that the Japanese now lead the world in developing new varieties of the plant, producing a multitude of colors. Asagao is based on the most common color, though – a lovely, vibrant blue. It is highly saturated ink that produces significant contrast on bright white paper, and exhibits low levels of shading when used with a fine-nib pen.

The ink performed modestly across a variety of paper types. On Rhodia paper, which is very fountain pen friendly, the ink dried in 4 seconds, and displayed moderate feathering. Show-through and bleed-through were both moderate as well – manageable, but one wouldn’t want to use this ink to write on both sides of the page. It performed reasonably well on cheap copier paper, where it dried in 1 second, and had low to moderate feathering. It had above average levels of bleed-through and show-through, though. Asagao fared the worst on Staples’ bagasse, where it dried in 2 seconds, but exhibited extraordinary feathering, and had high levels of bleed-through and show-through.

Asagao is the first Iroshizuku ink on which I’ve conducted a water test, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. They are not advertised as possessing any significant water resistance, so I had no idea whether it would wash out easily, or hang on tenaciously. Overall, it did reasonably well.

The smear test, in which I run a wet finger over the page, turned the lovely blue lines into a lovely blue smudge. However, the original lines remain legible beneath the large blue smear – the information is preserved, even though you wouldn’t want to hand the paper over to anyone you wanted to impress.

The drip test, in which I leave drops of water on the page for a few seconds or so before blotting, caused the lines to feather and some ink to be blotted up, but the sample was still readable. The soak test, in which I run the paper under a stream of water for thirty seconds in an attempt to wash the ink off the page, did rinse a great amount of the ink away. However, enough remained behind to be completely legible.

Iroshizuku bottles remain one of the loveliest designs in the field. The beautiful 50ml bottle brilliantly showcases the color of the ink it contains. It’s quite solid and its thick bottom gives it a surprising amount of heft. An indentation in the bottom of the bottle is intended to aid in soaking up the last few drops of ink.

When I first put Asagao into my pen, I felt as though it was missing something. It was vibrant, lovely to look at, and well behaved, but it didn’t quite have the unique character that many other Iroshizuku inks seem to possess. They’re colors that you just can’t find anywhere else. Then I realized that, as much as I love those inks, they never make it into my regular rotation. Asagao, on the other hand, would be perfect for daily use. It’s a little bold, especially on bright white paper, but on the cream-colored paper of a Moleskine or Midori notebook, it mellows and really comes into its own. If you like Iroshizuku inks, and you’re looking for a daily writer, then Asagao might be the one for you.

Iroshizuku Asagao is available from a number of sources, including the fine folks at Jet Pens.

Review Notes: The hand-written portions of the review were created on 80 g/m2 Rhodia paper from a No. 16 Bloc pad. The flourished italic script was written using a Lamy Joy fitted with a 1.9mm steel nib, while the remainder of the text was written using a Visconti Homo Sapiens fitted with an EF palladium nib.