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Colorverse Quasar Colorverse is a South Korean company that produces inks that are well-known for their iconic bottles and for their astronomy-related names. The Quasar in this review is from their season 2 inks that were released under the theme “Astrophysics”. The package comes with a big 65 ml bottle and a cute 15 ml small one. Fellow member Lgsoltek graciously gifted me a whole bunch of samples when leaving Paris, giving me the opportunity to try out a range of new inks. This Colorverse Quasar was one of them. Quasar is a richly saturated purple-leaning blue. The ink writes really well in all nib sizes with very good lubrication. It’s also an ink with a serious golden sheen, especially when using wet nibs. On the other hand, no shading to speak of (probably due to the high level of saturation). Personally, this is not my type of colour and the ink is too saturated for my taste. But that’s just me, you can make your own judgement using the information below. Quasar has a very limited dynamic range, with almost no contrast between light and dark parts. To illustrate this, I did a swab where I really saturated portions of the Tomoe River paper with ink, pooling it on. This lack of contrast explains why you get little shading in your writing (especially in finer nibs - the blow-up below with a B-nib is a bit misleading in this respect). You can also see that Quasar is well-saturated. As a result, the ink works great with EF nibs, where it produces a very readable and contrast-rich line. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – there is a huge amount of smearing, but the text itself remains crisp and clear. Water resistance is completely lacking. The still water test (letting drops of water sit on the page for 15 minutes) produces a colourful mess. With the running water test all ink simply disappears, leaving next to nothing on the page (see water test at the end of the review). I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the M-nib The source of the quote, written with the B-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib) Colorverse Quasar has a slight tendency to feather on the lower quality papers in my test set, most obvious when using a wet pen. I noticed no issues with better quality paper or when using finer nibs (M-nib or below). A bummer for me was that I also got some feathering on the Paperblanks paper, which is what I use for daily journaling. This is probable due to some inconsistencies during paper production. I’ve noticed that from time to time you get a bundle of paper of lesser quality. Happened a handful of times – I did a quick calculation: 11 notebooks (of 176 pages), a handful of bad bundles (5x 12 pages): that translates to 3% suboptimal paper. A bummer when it happens, but I can live with a 97% success rate. The ink writes smoothly with good lubrication, and provides excellent contrast with the page. Writing looks good on both white and more yellow paper, but I do prefer the ink’s look on the cream paper. Drying times are fairly low – in the 5 to 10 second range with my Lamy Safari M-nib. At the end of the review, I also show the back-side of the different paper types, in the same order. A small amount of bleed-through is present on some of the lower-quality papers, but nothing too bad. Since scans alone are not always enough to give you a complete picture of the ink, I also provide you with a few photos for an alternative look at Quasar blue. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Being a saturated ink, Quasar looks good in all nib sizes from EF up to 1.9 calligraphy nib. I personally prefer this ink with the F/M nib sizes. It’s presence on the page becomes a bit too dominant with the broader nibs. Related inks To compare Quasar with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Diamine Sargasso Sea comes close in colour. Inkxperiment – Looking Out The Window With every review I try to do a single-ink drawing that shows what the ink is capable of in a more artistic setting. The most fun part of the ink review, and I quite enjoy brainstorming and then implementing these little pieces. I had only a very limited amount of ink available, so I needed to maximally reuse the Q-tips used for the swabs in the writing samples. For this inkxperiment I started with a piece of 10x15 cm HP photo paper. I used the Q-tips from the swabs to draw the windows. Next, I used a kitchen sponge and heavily water-diluted ink to sponge in the background. For the window contours, I used my Lamy Safari M-nib and pure Quasar. Finally, a non-water diluted Q-tip was used to draw in the patterns, and the figure looking out the window. This little drawing gives you an idea of what can be achieved with Colorverse Quasar in a more artistic setting. Conclusion Colorverse Quasar is a very saturated blue with a strong purple undertone. The ink has a few shortcomings: prone to smudging, no water-resistance. But it works well in all nib sizes and writes flawlessly on better quality paper. I noticed a slight tendency to feather on lower-quality paper. For me personally, this ink is no good match: too saturated, and the colour doesn’t really speak to me. But that’s just me. You can draw your own conclusions with the info above. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types