Beautiful Blues - Fountain Pen Inks

I want to do more posts around my love of fine writing. While you're sure to see more beauty posts, etc, this is something I'd like to add to my mix of flavours in L'âme velouté.

Let's start with blues. They're a fine place to start.

1. Asa Gao by Iroshizuku
2. Luxury Blue by Noodler's Ink
3. Baystate Blue by Noodler's Ink

#1 - Asa Gao is one I have used every day for roughly 9 months now.

First off, I have to note how much I love this bottle...

Here's my review, including dry times for smudging, water test (smudge and untouched drop), long swatch for colour, multiple passes to see colour density, and description (along with adorable cat sketch for good measure).

Features:

• Not too permanent. That can be a good thing:
• Probably won't stain your surfaces when you're playing with the bottle and filling a pen.
• Easy to work with if you're doing a sketch, like my cat. It was easy to blend things and it gave me decent control.
• Nice vibrant jewel-blue.
• Minimal feathering (nice fine lines)

#2 - Luxury blue is a "nice" blue. I like it a lot. Nice is exactly the word I want to use when I see it. It's a perfect medium shade, not a dull colour by any means, and it has a bit of character leaning just a whisper toward the green side (it in no way looks green, it is of course quite blue, but you can see what I mean about the tone when you compare it to a true blue, like a royal blue).

I have a baby-size bottle, the 30 ml...

Again, my review... you can see that it takes a while to fully dry, but it's not something I've ever noticed when I write with it normally. Never been a problem. Definitely it does deepen with multiple passes.

Features:

• Decently water-resistant
• Good shading
• Lovely luminosity 

Issues:

• When you open the bottle, there's a crust of ink that can build up. You can hear it when you open it. Same thing happens with the pen if you've been using this ink in your pen for several weeks, even if you use the pen all day every day - nib and feed can get gummed up from compounded dry ink. Stops up the pen a bit sometimes. That being said, all you need to do when that happens is flush the nib a bit, clean it up. Certainly it won't cause any damage, this crusting problem; Noodler inks are always kind to my pens, and this isn't a deal-breaker, I personally am still behind this ink, I love it. However, it's something to note, I think.

#3 - Baystate Blue is incredible. It's the brightest, most vibrant, highest contrast blue I've seen, and I've seen a great, great many.

My apologies for the very creepy cat... it didn't turn out too well. I tried.

Features:

• Dries crazy-quick, no smudging (but that's because it sinks so quickly into the paper, causing feathering)
• WOW, the colour...
• Not much difference between the multiple passes - full colour density is achieved from the first pass
• Holds up to water very well

Issues

• Massive feathering, but it does mean a fast dry-time, and it could be avoided by using a less absorbent paper
• This STAINS EVERYTHING! And I really mean STAIN. It stained my stainless-steel kitchen sink! It's very potent stuff. Hence the amazing colour that is achieved here. Just something to note.

I hope you enjoyed these. I like blues myself. They're very pleasing to the eye. I plan to review some other Noodler Inks soon - they're my favourite because they perform better than other brands I've used.

Have a great day and thanks for reading,

A.