Perfered School or Work Ink Color.

[sleek_lover]

Noodler MIDNIGHT BLUES be the best...

[Shangas]

I am currently using Parker Quink in Black, but this is my last cartridge

 

Yes, black is timeless. If you want more ink, I'd suggest buying a BOTTLE of Parker Quink in black. It's probably cheaper and I know for a fact it'll last a hell of a lot longer. Unless your pen doesn't have a converter or other-such built-in ink-storage device...then you'll have to stick to cartridges. I love Parker Quink so much.

 

[DavidB]

I use Noodler's Empire Red for the body of text that I write each day, saving Legal Lapis for signatures and "highlighting" my text. Come to think of it, since the red is the main text, Legal lapis should be "lowlighting" since it is significantly darker then Empire Red.

 

DavidB

[Ghost Plane]

Seems lately I'm defaulting to PR Black Cherry with Tanzanite when I need a rest from it.

[Dave Johannsen]

On Noodlers black, is it true that you have to shake it every time you go to use it?

 

I never have and I've never heard of any reason for doing so. But it wouldn't hurt I guess

 

Certainly not every time, but the pigments (or dyes or whatever they're called) do settle. I didn't used a new bottle for some time after it arrived., When I finally got around to trying it, I was extremely disappointed and couldn't for the life of me understand why everyone talked about how wonderful the black color was (my Omas grey was darker). Then I stumbled onto a thread here where someone talked about shaking the bottle, and now I agree that it is a very black black. I think that an occasional shake is a good thing.

 

 

Dave

[Dan Carmell]

I voted for blue because I like to be able to tell signed originals, which I deal with a lot, from photocopies.

 

Dan

[DavidB]

http://jp29.org/File0209.jpg

James, your writing is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us. I wish that I had the talent and time to practice to improve what I do have.

 

DavidB

[DavidB]

Where I work, most people end up using black sharpie pens, with the less adventurous branching out to include RED for highlighting / underlining and contrast. Very rarely do I see green or blue sharpies at all.

----

Well, to sum up, I have to be a non-conformist at work and use my fountain pens which makes my co-workers smile amusedly (silly of them, don't you think?).

 

I have used Waterman inks in the past but was not happy with the saturation levels of the colors when they had dried, prompting me to buy four bottles of Noodler's ink.

 

My first year after switching to Noodler's I used Eternal Brown exclusively because that was all I had, but not at work. My second year, I added Legal Lapis and Empire Red to my shelf and have stopped using Eternal Brown. I also have a bottle of Ottoman Azure for my 9 year old son, as soon as I'm brave enough to give him a pen and show him how to refill it without making a mess.

 

I've found that switching between two colors (Empire Red and Legal Lapis) makes my lab notebook much more legible, so each day I'll alternate, making Empire Red my primary color Mon / Wed / Fri, and secondary on Tues / Thurs.

 

Many FPN members complain about Noodler's nib creep, but I don't mind it. I just wipe my pens down in the morning and work through the day. Maybe I just like looking at the colors more than other people, or maybe I love the inks more than the pens, so I'll tolerate a lot from my pens. Because I have some strict work restrictions on the pens I can use, I carry two Lamy Safaris with steel nibs (one F, one XF) and play with the kinds of lines I can lay on as many different kinds of papers as possible.

 

How do these inks write? Glad you asked ... ! I have found that Legal Lapis flows more freely than Empire Red from both my F and my XF nib, especially on some 100% cotton resume paper that I recently bought and want to get rid of as soon as possible (it's too rough for an XF nib). I've also written with both these inks in a Waterman Hemisphere pen with a Medium nib, and I've fallen in love with Empire Red because of it. The better quality my paper is, using any of these pens, the wetter a line the ink leaves as it flows and the richer the color appears. Legal Lapis is a stunningly subtle mixture of blue, green (which others assure me they see) and traces of black. The color changes based on the nib, paper thirst and writing pressure. When using an XF nib, it concentrates and looks nearly black with subtle flashes of color that make my head turn, while my M Hemisphere nib can lay down lines that range from the deep blue of Montana sky to a dark rich blue that pools on the paper and seems to float on top of it. It's a very wet ink.

 

Empire Red is not as wet an ink, but the color contrast to the deep blues of Legal Lapis is particularly stunning. My XF nib lays down a needle-thin line of red and provides some excellent line width variation as I learn to vary my writing angle (or as my hand tires, which is all too easy because my writing hand posture is atrocious). It is harder to make writing on a thirsty paper look good with XF or M nibs - it dries just a little too quickly for me (is it me? I can't tell) - and often skips on very thirsty paper, or can sometimes look a bit watered-down on paper that feathers slightly. But, get a good smooth paper and the color can vary from rich to what I call "arterial red", the color of blood that you see when your finger is pricked at the doctor's office. When I leave a particularly wet spot on some of the best paper I own (I use Empire Red to underline verses in my scriptures), Empire Red actually looks opaque, like it's sitting on top of the paper, with a low gloss to it, while the rest of the flow line leading up to this wet spot has soaked in and vanished into the paper. I have to go back and check to see if it's still wet, even 2 minutes later, it looks so vivid.

 

For me, I tried black and the standard shades of blue long ago, and quickly tired of them because they were so flat and uninspiring. Noodler's Black just disappeared into the paper and absorbed all the light that landed on it. Which is good, for a black, but not what I'm looking for. Blues are too often washed out or just lie there on(in) the paper. but Nathan's inks really are addictive (a lot like Indian food) - complex, subtle mixes of who-knows-what that are blissfully beautiful together.

 

I love ink. Pens are great, too, and picking nice pens is a lot of fun, but part of me really doesn't take the pen seriously because they're just a tool to get my ink onto paper.

 

DavidB

Edited June 1, 2007 by DavidB

[iGoRawr]

I preferably like to use Noodler's Navajo Turquoise in my notes for school.

 

-Kim

[PAKMAN]

I always seem to have a fine point pen in use at work with Parker Quink blue-black. Lately my second pen at work is usually filled with FPN Tulipe Noire.

 

 

[AndyH]

I alternate between a blue and a black (or blue/black), and have a fine point with a dark red for notes on plans and drawings.

 

Signatures are always in blue. My blue/blacks are a Montblanc blue and Sheaffer Skrip. Black is a Parker Quink. Blue used to be Parker Penman Sapphire till I could no longer get it; Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue is my new favorite.

 

I have also switched from Parker Penman Ruby to the Private Reserve burgundy, a nice color, both rich and dark. It flows nicely in a fine point Sheaffer Touchdown that's one of my new favorites as well as from my fine and ultrafine Esties.

[wykpenguin]

A Zhivago fan. Black enough to pass as black to unsuspecting school teachers which detest fancy colours in assignments. Green enough for me to feel good about using it.

 

Never had much appetite for blues and blacks. As DavidB says, blacks look flat. I do keep a bottle of Polar Black for sketches and things that I don't want to smear. After all, the green in Zhivago does smear to leave the black in place.

[DetlevCM]

I use Blue Black ever since I have my Montblanc - also because its gallus ink, and because I didn't know about it before.

 

Blue - used it in schoold, a touch light for my tastes...

 

Black - don't like it that much for my ink...

 

Blue Black is the perfect mix of light (the blue) and dark (the gallus bit)

[DerMann]

My coursework usually gets done in some sort of blue (Imperial Blue, Baystate Blue, American Eel Blue, or Royal Blue). That's not to say I don't use other colours. Quite the opposite.

 

I make sure to use a different FP every day of the week, each with a different colour (well, most).

 

Black, blue-black, blue, purple, red.

[lapis]

I don't remember whether or not I've already said this here but in this order:

1. my mix of black-purple-brown

2. Eclat de saphir

3. Bleu nuit

4. Much less often but still important for corrections/ephasis: Skrip red

 

Mike

[reprieve]

I have been using Montblanc Violet for notes. I also frequently use Noodlers Walnut. Occasionally Visconti Burgundy. When I need a more traditional color, I reach for either Noodlers or Pelikan Blue-black.

[hamadryad11]

Green, brown, purple, orange, burgundy... Whatever colour I feel like. Rarely black, and even more rarely blue.

[dwallace]

I've always thought of Blue and Black as the default colours for writing and all the others are novelty. Not saying they're my favourites, but my bottles of blue and black are lower than all the rest. Blue is my prefered colour for school work because it goes well in fountain pens and stands out from the ruled lines. If I were to use any other colour it would probably be a dark brown like Havanna.

[derkleineHerrFriedemann]

I wrote an essay with Herbin Violette Pensée on letter-paper which we had to hand in to the professor at the university, while everyone else had it made and printed on computer. I liked the idea.

 

Otherwise I mostly use Quink Washable Blue, which I don't like, so I mixed it with some Herbin Violette Pensée.

Cross Black (for titles mostly), vintage Pelikan 4001 Green (I love it), Quink Red (long cartridges, I wish they were still available in bottle! Great colour), Herbin Violette Pensée, and Herin Bouton D'or (markings with italic nib)

 

I use all these colours, but most students use bic ballpoints. It looks awful to me, and must be very tiring for the hands.

 

(first post btw, )

[Rainbow]

I only discovered fountain pen love in December, so I haven't many colours of ink yet, but my preferred colours right now are La Reine Mauve and (the newest) Highland Heather (which is what I'd call a muted mauve, while LRM is actually a glorious deep purple).