Search the Community

L'Artisan Pastellier Callifolio - Bleu Pacifique L’Artisan Pastellier is a small company in southern France that specialises in natural pigments, and offers customers authentic and reliable products in beautiful colours based on mineral or vegetable pigments. In a collaboration with Loic Rainouard from Styloplume.net, the chemist Didier Boinnard from L’Artisan Pastellier created the line of Callifolio fountain pen inks. These pastel-colored inks are traditionally crafted, and can be freely mixed and matched. Overall these inks are only moderately saturated, and have low water-resistance. The inks were specifically designed to work well with all types of paper, and all types of fountain pens. Being pastel-tinted, these inks have a watercolor-like appearance, and are not only fine inks for journaling, but are also really excellent inks for doodling & drawing. I only recently discovered them, and they are already the inks I gravitate towards for personal journaling. In this review I take a closer look at Bleu Pacifique, one of the many blue inks of the series. The blue Callifolio inks are named after rivers, lakes and oceans – this one gets its name from the Pacific Ocean. Bleu Pacifique is a really bright light-blue ink with a hint of green undertones. Think of a blue lagoon on a very bright day, with just a small shimmer of the green seabed coming through. A really nice and sunny colour. That being said – I personnaly prefer the true blue cerulean inks like Pelikan Edelstein Topaz, Pilot Iroshizuku kon-peki and Callifolio Bleu Atlantique. The ink writes well, with good flow, and is nicely saturated. Lubrication is surprisingly good for a Callifolio ink, with almost no feedback from the paper when writing. Bleu Pacifique is comfortable with all nib sizes – it even looks good and nicely saturated with an EF nib. The ink exhibits a pleasing unobtrusive shading with the finer nibs, and really robust shading with broader nibs. On the whole, a pleasing ink for writing, but a bit too bright for use in the workplace. Bleu Pacifique smudges easily, but the result remains very readable. On the water resistance front, we can be brief: this ink has zero water resistance. Even short exposures to water obliterate all of your writing. There is nothing left to read on the paper! This is a bit disappointing. When using a water-brush with doodling & drawing, you get a nice light-blue shading effect, that contrasts well with the inky lines. Like all Callifolio inks, Bleu Pacifique is a very fine choice for inky drawings. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. For the Callifolio reviews, I’m using a new format to show you the ink’s appearance and behaviour on the different paper types. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturationAn ink scribble made with an M-nib fountain penThe name of the paper used, written with a B-nibA small text sample, written with an M-nibDrying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib)For this review, I have extended my test repository with two new papers: Original Crown Mill Vellum paper and Graf von Faber-Castell 100gsm notebook paper. Bleu Pacifique behaved perfectly on all the paper types, with no apparent feathering even on the lower quality papers in my test set. Drying times are mostly around the 10 second mark, with a low of 5 seconds on the more absorbent paper. This is a quick-drying ink. The ink is equally at home with both white and off-white creamy paper. I also show the back-side of the different paper types, in the same order. With the low-end Moleskine there is significant show-through and bleed-through. Surprisingly, the generic 70gsm notepad paper behaved really well with this ink. Another surprise, the Graf von Faber-Castell paper had lots of problems with show-through and bleed through - I didn’t expect this from a 100gsm paper type. On the other hand, the writing itself looks stunning on this paper. With the other papers, Bleu Pacifique’s behaviour is impeccable. The ink copes really well with a wide variety of paper types. Conclusion Bleu Pacifique is a very well-behaving ink on a wide range of paper, with surprisingly good lubrication for a Callifolio ink. The ink works well with finer nib sizes, and shows robust shading in the broader nibs. The lagoon-like colour is a very bright light-blue with a hint of green undertones. If you don’t like the green component, look at another ocean with Bleu Atlantique. I find Bleu Pacifique to be very enjoyable for doodling & drawing. For lasting writing it’s total lack of water resistance can be a problem though. Overall, Bleu Pacifique is a fine ink, but - in my personal opinion - looses some of its appeal because of the green undertone and the non-existent water resistance. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib