For years, in my search for the perfect hue, I only bought bottles of blue ink. Noodler’s Apache Sunset was the first ink that I saw someone write with that made me want to try something new. It’s still my favorite orange, overall. The great thing about Noodler’s Apache Sunset is that it produces such […]
Oxblood is almost (but not quite) dark enough to be used as an every-day ink as a replacement for black. In practical use, though, the ink is thin enough that even with a wet pen on good paper, the red color is pretty apparent when dry. This was among the first group of reddish inks […]
Blood Orange is currently my favorite dark orange-red ink in my collection (if that seems overly specific it’s because I’m leaving room for Apache Sunset to be my favorite orange). The ink is very wet and lays down heavily with some of my pens, but in a medium-flow pen, on good paper, the shading is […]
Magical Forest is another one of the inks that I bought through Amazon from the Pilotfish storefront in the UK because they cost just $6-8, and I’m almost as obsessed with getting a good deal as I am with getting new inks. Anyway, Diamine Magical Forest is a medium green ink with silver shimmer (fine […]
Firefly was the first shimmer ink that I bought on purpose. In part it’s just because I was a big fan of the Joss Whedon show, but it also just looked like a good color to have gold sparkle in it, and for a period of about a month, I thought that glittery inks were […]
When I first started getting interested in sheening inks, this was the first bottle that I bought, not because it was clearly the best, but because it was recommended by Brian Goulet in a YouTube video about sheening inks, it was easy to find and not too expensive. As it turns out, the ink is […]
In all of my time in India I somehow failed to encounter Krishna inks, which is unfortunate because they offer some very unusual and beautiful inks, and they’re on the expensive side (by volume) in the USA. Moonview 2 is the higher-sheen formulation of their popular ink, and it is enchanting. The base color is […]
Kon-Peki was the first Pilot Iroshizuku ink that I ever purchased, and I’ll admit that a big part of my choice was the fact that the bottle is so gorgeous. That thick, heavy glass, the smooth curves, the ink well in the bottom center, the minimalist label… this is the sort of thing that makes […]
If it isn’t obvious yet, I have a thing for bright blue inks; the more saturated and vibrant the better. My first love was Noodler’s Bay State Blue (still near the top of my list), but I had some concerns about using it in some of my pens, and I wanted something with a little […]
I was in India just over a year ago, wandering around a high-brow shopping district in Delhi. I’d been in the country for several weeks and was out of ink, and I was just looking for any bottle of anything. I stepped into an art-supply shop and asked for ink, hoping for something interesting… and […]











