My Personal Top 10 Fountain Pen Inks 

Not boring at all! I had no idea pink was first colour. Will look into origin of colours, thank you! Since you seem to have many inks, which ones do you like most?

@@alexandrapirvu7945 I have some favorite inks so far this month. I enjoy effects, such as sheening & shading is nice as well. Shimmer appeals to me, but shimmer is an actual particulate added to the ink, much like a pigment. I have found if the particulate size (which is measured in microns) is too large, it will clog your pen. You will not find this information on ink. Unfortunately, it’s try as you go. I’d purchase an inexpensive fountain pen which can be a good writer to try these inks out. Jinhao makes some decent writers & I found a few demonstrator or clear Yiren’s made out of plastic for $0.99 from Ali Express. I also found recently a very plain black metal pen on eBay for approximately $9.50 called Pimio with a medium steel nib. It writes quite nicely. It’s also known as Picasso & when it comes in a nice box it’s a lot more money. I have some very nice pens, & I have used sheening inks in them, but maybe I’m being bad. So far the pens are fine. Those inks are more heavily saturated. Most ink for fountain pens is dye. Pigment is color similar to sparkle particulate. There is all kinds of sparkle & some inks are great & some don’t work in any size nib. I’m still researching & learning. I have a lot yet to learn. Favorite inks this month: Vinta is a brand of ink from the Philippines & they have 32 colors in their collection. My 2 favorites from Vinta are Malayan Apple “Makopa” 1938 & Azure “Maharlika” 7107. They both sheen, but you need better paper, like Tomoe River to see the sheen. I have more from the collection I enjoy which don’t sheen, like Summer Green “Karnival” 1908. It’s a very pretty green. I love Organics Studio “Nitrogen Royal Blue”. So far, it sheens on everything & I have it in a fairly nice pen for the past month. A couple of shimmering inks which surprised me are Colorverse Ink Project “Shiny Black” Glistening/001 & Jacques Herbin “Vert Atlantide”. At first I couldn’t stand “Shiny Black” by Colorverse, but now I like looking at it & it writes very nicely in a medium nib. I really enjoy Noodler’s “Cactus Fruit Eel”. It’s a lot nicer than I was expecting. Also Iroshizuku “Kon-Peki” is always a beautiful blue. Lamy Crystal “Peridot” & “Beryllium” are favs as well. I love Diamine’s Anniversary Edition “Blue Black 1864”. That’s my favorite “Blue Black” so far. But, I really like all the Diamine Anniversary Edition colors. Diamine “Red Dragon” & “Oxblood” are reds I like. But I tend to like blood red. If you like a brighter red, Iroshizuku “Momji” is nice. BunGuBox “Imperial Purple” is a really nice dark purple color & as back-up I like Diamine “Bilberry”. I’ve been using Diamine”Sherwood Green” as well. So far Diamine writes nicely in all my pens. Hero Ink “Black” in the 40 mL bottle was my favorite plain black, because it is so dark & uncomplicated. I can’t find it anymore. I bought it in China. I have a new “Black” arriving (I hope) which is suppose to be just as good. And I have all the standard blacks which are recommended. My goodness, I just realized I have many more inks & some I haven’t had the chance to use except to try them out. I may have a problem...

@@hekatsees9449 thank you for the detailed information! I haven't tried any shimmer ink yet. Agree about Jinhao, some of them write better than expensive pens. I wish I could order more ink samples in my country, but there's no seller doing it. Diamine is already "rare", but Vinta inks, even more. I hope to give them a try from other European sites. Thank you for sharing what you have learned and your ink favourites!

@@alexandrapirvu7945 I apologize for not inquiring where you are located. What fountain pen inks are readily or easily available to you? Who knows, maybe I have tried some of them. There are many inks that are quite nice...

I bought a Parker Quink blue bottle around 2005, and I still have it, I've started using it more recently. I don't know if ink "expires" or anything like that, but this ink bottle is fine.

A recent video by gadgetstop123 shows SBREBrown in a number of pens looking orange.

I'm not a content creator but have some familiarity with photography. I always wonder wouldn't a 20% grey card and white balance adjustment against that in post editing solve these issues? There is a blue tint to the picture Inn this review and I can't believe that can't be fixed. Having said that, I do appreciate the value of these videos for drawing attention to potentially new inks and of course just to see more great content from Mr Brown.

Yes...got some for Christmas last year, and as soon as I started using it, noticed the orange. It’s more apparent with its shading. The odd thing is I don’t even like orange, but that aspect of the ink very attractive! Love the ink.

@@breadyegg you can use a colour pasport and software to get an exact match.. on your end. But then little Timmy watches your video with his monitor set to ‘gaming’ or some super saturation / cool profile and it will look different again Colour calibration is good for print or product shots you hand over to someone for editing.

Even on the cheapest school paper ever it behaves. Cleaning it is a breeze. All the Waterman inks are well behaved. If you don’t like serenity blues color try any other Waterman ink!

I noticed the other day that some of my noodlers inks have a slight smell. And it reminds me of art class as a kid. (It smells like those goopy paints in the little plastic cups lol)

Back in the 70s and 80s when I was a kid Parker Blue Black Quink was the only alternative to blue ink ...

@@korax67 in the 90's my only option was parker blue OR black at the store lol. Not even a blue black :D I think they still have the same two options at that store. But now i can get whatever online as well.

My favorite blue black is Script. I used it in high school and I always have one pen inked with it. (The newer ones don't smell as good but I guess I could have lost some sense of smell.) Love SBREBrown's videos. No fluff, just straight forward subject matter.

Shaeffer black is also really black.

IS NOT to be considered lightly.

I've read that Diamine Matador is pretty similar to Corn Poppy Red, too. I'm a fan of Diamine's own Poppy Red, but Diamine's version is definitely more orange.

You named 2 of my favorite Akkerman Inks. Have you found them yet? I’m in the United States and found them at Vanness in June, 2021. I haven’t checked lately, but they may still be available….

Agreed don’t forget mysterious blue though!

Me too!

Sheaffer red

K-word :D i had hated that colour, but today it's one of my favourites. I started to write with Parker Vector and Parker Quink washable blue in 1999... Today one of my most used inks is Pelikan not to be mentioned K :) Maybe it's because here in the Czech Republic we had to use fountain pen only two years and then i switched to ballpoints for many years.

What is the meaning of k-word?

@@gaurava972 königsblau (royal blue)

@@zdenkasimurdova32 I think it is an color which is okay. Like any other color. But it is overused through school and it is the "norm". The love-hate of that color is more or less joke-material.

@@gaurava972 It is more or less a bad joke. A joke about the fact that many doesn't like that specific color, because it is the typical school-ink-color. And used anywhere. It is Königsblau. There. I said it.... :( :D Translated it is the royal blue. Many here in germany and surrounding nations are joking that this is the ink that should not be named. ;)

Parker quink for me :P

Serenity and blue black were my first!

It's because of COVID - it was supposed to be shown in cinemas, but it went straight to RU-vid ;)

There is a list of vendors and discount codes on my website

There is some nib creep in these inks, but I don't think it is terrible

They are pretty but they sure are expensive! Oof

I don't particularly care for Waterman Green either!

Waterman green is just a bit too basic like that green ballpoint you used in school. Waterman’s best inks personally are the two blues, the purple and maybe the brown or red. I don’t care for black inks (mainly due to a horrible incident with poor Chinese quality hero ink/failed purple grey mix) they are a bit to boring.

The manufacturer is Aurora.

@@sbrebrown Thank you

Pilot namiki black or blue-black

Sheaffer Skrip Red is fairly close

@@sbrebrown i will check it. Thank you

Great ink soooo worth it!

@@rhashem1534 Yeah, my definition of ink is "a blue-black writing fluid made by Waterman". :-)

You're wise. The lightfastness of an ink also gives an indication of how it will age. Back in the 1980s I filled a couple of books with sketches, logic and algorithms for a project I worked on. I used different colored inks for different contexts to make it clearer. Slightly more than a decade later I revisited those notes, and a lot of them had faded badly. It was clear that they wouldn't even be readable in some more years. I test my inks on a window, in daylight, for two weeks. What I can say in general terms, is that the hue known as 'Royal Blue'/'washable blue' seem to be made from the same dye in most brands, because they all not just look the same but also fade about the same - which is not much, but still noticeable. Consistently good brands, regardless of color, have been Parker Quink and Rohrer & Klingner. Montblanc might also be consistently good, I've just not tested all. Most other brands offer both hits and misses; some of their inks are very good, others are fugitive. Consistently bad colors are bright blues (brighter than Royal Blue/Washable Blue) leaning towards violet, i.e. cobalt or ultramarine blues, but usually named 'Sapphire Blue'. I've never encountered a good one sofar. It's as if there's no good dye available in that color. The best of them seem to be Baystate Blue and it's still not good. Consistently good colors are blues that lean toward cyan, turquois, particularly Blue-Blacks that lean a bit towards green. But also just as you suggested, dark dull colors in general. The champion when it comes to durable inks is Noodler. But Noodler also have some fugitive inks. So it's the inks that are marketed as durable, like "bullet proof", "eternal", "warden", "empire" that are the most lightfast. But they are also usually the most gunky and troublesome. Noodler's Black and 54'th Massachusetts are excellent though.

@@Vermiliontea good info

@@Vermiliontea It just struck me that you said some inks fade over time even inside a sketchbook, unexposed to light. That is VERY disheartening. I guess I will stick with Noodler's Archival inks from now on.

@@ichirofakename There is no such thing as a completely permanent organic dye or pigment. Time will eventually break them down. Exposing to light accelerates the process and thus lightfastness gives us some indication of what permanence to expect from each. Noodler's archival inks are also the most annoyingly troublesome. Gunky, irregular flow and toxic. Some of them even ruin some rubber and plastic parts of some pens. And have a ton of protection you probably don't need, against things like bleaches, solvents, IR-lasers, UV-lamps. I like Noodler's Black and 54th Mass. They're a good compromise. They're waterproof and fade resistant, but still handle and write rather well. But there are fade resistant inks among the normal, benign inks as well, in all brands. You just have to test them to know. P.S. a tip. When using a cellulose reactive ink like Noodler's or de Atramentis' waterproof inks, you should turn over and swirl the ink in the bottle, before each time you fill the pen. Most people don't seem to know this.

@@ichirofakename You mentioned "sketchbook"? If you want a black ink for artwork, you should look at Platinum Carbon. It's a non-organic, carbon nano-pigment ink. It's completely permanent and can be washed over with watercolors without bleeding. You just have to be attentive to the pen. Wash it out in time. Don't let the pen dry out and use it in a pen that is easy to disassemble and clean.

Waterman red, Diamine red dragon, Pilot red.

Schaefer Skrip red is awesome! Not only is it a TRUE red, but it will NOT clog, cleaning up exTREMEly well. And lastly, a bottle of it is inexpensive.

Second Sheaffer red ink. It's a longstanding favorite red for many people, and like most Sheaffer inks, well behaved.

?

Sheaffer Skrip Red is quite close

@@sbrebrown Thanks

Well, as the title says, this is my personal top 10 of inks.

You are correct sir, for me either two things - a) mix it with a black ink and that creates a beautiful black-blue or b) one of the main reason I love this ink is because it colour shift, it really makes the ink mysterious as to what colour it will be!