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L'Artisan Pastellier Callifolio - Omi Osun 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 Omi Osun, one of the many blue inks of the Callifolio brand. The blue inks of the line seem to be named after rivers and lakes – so my educated guess is that the ink is named after the Omi Osun river in southwestern Nigeria. This is a nice blue-green ink, that leans heavily towards the blue side of the spectrum – just as I like it ! The ink is nicely saturated, especially in the broader nibs. It’s also an ink with *lots* of shading, but – again – you need the broader nibs to show this off. The ink started to show a hint of its potential in the F-nib, but you need an M-nib or above to really open up the ink. A nice feature of the ink is that it shows “outlining” – with this I mean that you get a darker-coloured outline around your writing, as illustrated in the blow-up from a broad nib below. This is a very nice graphic effect, that I really appreciate ! Omi Osun is an ink for personal use, not an ink for the workplace. The ink is relatively smudge-resistant – the colour spreads, but the words remain legible. But the ink is definitely not water-resistant. The chromatograply suggests that a light-brown residue remains, but in reality what remains on the paper after coming in contact with water is near illegible. With a magnifying glass and lots of patience, you might be able to reconstruct your writings, but don’t count on it. Even a short 10-second exposure to running tap water made the text disappear. Keep this in mind – not an ink to use if water-resistance is high on your list. On the other hand – the low water-resistance is a big plus when doodling & drawing. With a water-brush you can easily spread out the ink, and obtain some nice shading effects. 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 testing 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)Omi Osun behaved perfectly on all the paper types – it even shows no feathering on the notoriously bad Moleskine paper. That’s quite a feat ! This is also a fast-drying ink – mostly in the 10-15 second range, even on the Tomoe River paper. On the Original Crown Mill cotton paper, there was noticeable feedback while writing – I also have the impression that the ink is drawn straight down into the paper, the effect of which translates into a reduction of nib size. The text that I’ve written with an M-nib looks as though its written with an F-nib. Strange… I’ve never seen such behaviour before. I also show the back-side of the different paper types, in the same order. With the low-end generic paper and the Moleskine paper, there is significant show-through and bleed-through. With the other papers, Omi Osun’s behaviour is impeccable. On Tomoe River, there is some slight bleed-through on the ink-swabs. Conclusion Omi Osun is a very well-behaving ink, though one without water resistance. The ink has some nice shading in broader nibs, and a wonderful graphic outlining effect that I really like. And this is a blue-green on the blue side of the spectrum, just as I like it. For me – that’s a definite plus. I really enjoyed using this ink, and I think it certainly deserves an A. Technical test results on Rhodia N°16 notepad 80 gsm , written with Lamy Safari, M-nib