Do you have any inks that you wanted to buy after reading great reviews that turned out less exciting than expected?
My biggest disappointment is Diamine Skull & Roses. After seeing swatches online I expected a blue ink with a visible red sheen. Unfortunately the sheen is just not there at all, it looks like an average dark blue ink, not even blurple. I’m glad I’ve only bought the 30 ml bottle.
For me, that was Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses. It looked so cool and full of shading in the swatches I looked at - especially when it got dark, nearly black where it pooled.
Maybe I got another, worse batch of it or something, but for me it’s just a really uniform magenta, even on TR and wet pens. I don’t get what the hype is about, but maybe I was just unlucky.
Funnily, for me, skull and roses sheens red pretty heavily on nearly all papers. Maybe you got a bad batch, as well?
I loved Black Swan with Roses but only had a small sample. It does sound like inconsistent quality.
Robert Oster Smoke Screen - the pictures look great but it’s been boring in every test. It was frustrating because I usually stick with Diamine and felt like wasted money.
I have had some issues with Robert Oster inks and hard starts. In particular, they don’t work well in my Lamy 2000 fine nib and Pilot Prera medium nib pens, whereas a Pilot Iroshizuku ink I bought recently seems to flow a lot better. It’s a shame, because I do like the colours; I might try them in my Kaweco sport pen (which has a wetter medium nib) and see if they flow better.
I’ve really liked most Robert Oster inks and haven’t had trouble in my Lamy 2000 fine nib - though that nib is closer to a medium which may be helping.
Iroshizuku ink has never let me down.
I’m also a left hander, so that may play into it as well.
I do not know the particular ink, but what paper have you tried it on? I see very big difference depending on paper :)
It’s fun with inks - sometimes I’m really sure I’m gonna enjoy it - but I don’t. But just as often it’s the other way around.
On good paper, Midori. The sheen is just hardly noticeable. There are several other sheen inks in that series and Hell’s Bells is the one with the most noticeable sheen.
Diamine Syrah. People were raving about it and Diamine makes one of the few inks in my permanent rotation, so I was really disappointed to find that Syrah was poorly behaved and ultimately a shade that didn’t do much for me either.
I like Diamine inks a lot, perfect price to effect ratio :-) and made in Europe. It is just this one that’s lacking in the sheen department.
Noodler’s 54th Massachusetts. I love the color and the permanence characteristics. But it is waaaay too much of a gusher. I’ve read that there is some inconsistency between batches, so I periodically order a sample just to see if it’s changed. It never has for me. I even get some bleed through on really nice papers like Tomoe River.
I’ve turned to Sailor Souboku as an alternative permanent dark gray-blue.
My very first ink I brought was this. The noodlers polar green ink. It feathered like nothing else even on good paper sometimes… But the color is still gorgeous to me. But as it stands I’m unable to use it