New Fountain Pen Inks!

With so many fountain pen ink colors available and from many different manufacturers, I never thought I would be devoted to one favorite ink brand. Yes, that would be Robert Oster Signature Inks. There is a reason why he is the king of blue inks and why artists drool over his ink colors. Yes, I am one of them.

This morning, I was in the midst of doing some artwork when a small packaged arrived. It caught me by surprise as I was not expecting to receive the inks until early next week. So, naturally I had to stop what I was doing and go play with my new bottles! I do have my priorities! Hahaha!

I wasted no time and filled my last three empty TWSBI GOs.

Believe or not these three colors are not duplicates in my RO ink stash. That’s how good his colors are!

A few weeks ago when I saw the three colors appear on my radar, I knew I wanted the Charred Hickory color. I have several brown inks, but nothing as bright as this color. The other two special colors made their way into my cart. They are exclusive inks. A collaboration between Robert Oster and Vanness.

Beside using swatch cards, I also have a swatch ink journal where I apply water washes over the ink to see what type of ink characteristics appear.

My ink swatch journal on the top part of the picture. On the bottom I swabbed the colors onto a paper towel and applied drops of water and watch the colors spread. Did you catch my mistake?

My ink swatch journal is a Stalogy 365 B6. The paper in this journal is thin and gives me an idea of what to expect when I sketch with the ink colors. This paper is also capable of showing me some shading and sheen qualities. Not the same as Tomoe River Paper (TRP) quality, but fairly close.

You can see from the paper towel sample, more than one color appears in each swatch. Turns out the Hemp (green) color is a lovely surprise. In case you are wondering, the blue swatch is called Blue River. Sorry about that. I was so excited to have the colors in my possession that I forgot to double check my work before taking the pictures.

My Col-o-ring swatch cards and paper towel swatch together

Robert Oster has created some amazing ink colors. Not just for writing in my journals, but for creating artwork. There are other ink manufacturers that I’m currently experimenting with (KWZ, Diamine, Taccia, etc) and I will share my ink experience and artwork in future posts.

Now, I need to go and finish what I was doing and also create more artwork with my new inks. Have a fantastic weekend!