Sepia Toned Ink Comparison - 32 Inks

[dcpritch]

Thank you for putting so much time and effort into exploring the mystery of sepia. As an art director and photographer I always defined sepia as a desaturated (grayish) brown, or a "warm gray." But obviously a lot of people equate sepia with brown. Very interesting!

 

Thanks for the compliment, and for your thoughts. I learned from this comparison that whatever thought one has in his head about what tone sepia should be, there is an ink to match. I'm curious which ink is the closest match to your idea of sepia? For me it has always been either the reddish tone of OMAS Sepia and the greyish brown of R&K Sepia. In fact, the wide difference between these two inks, and between a few others, is what led me to undertake the comparison.

[jbn10161]

JH Cacao du Bresil is indeed an unusual color. I would call it a steel grey, no brown in it at all. Though I think it is outside the spectrum of what most folks consider to be "sepia", it was easy to include it here just to show how far outside the spectrum it really is.

 

Your bottle of CduB has suffered heat distress, aging, or some other problem. That's not at all the color of that ink. The swatches of other inks I have used look perfect on my monitor. I love J. Herbin inks, but I've noticed that the occasional bottle can be off for one reason or another, probably distress in transit or storage. Cacao du Bresil is a lightish brown, grayish, nearly lavender(!) color that is extremely hard to describe but intriguing to see.

 

Thanks for all the effort to produce those swatches and samples. It's a real resource. (And I'm glad you included OMAS sepia. It's a fantastic ink in all respects except water resistance--it almost disappears after being wet.)

[MJ Vesuvius]

Thank you for putting so much time and effort into exploring the mystery of sepia. As an art director and photographer I always defined sepia as a desaturated (grayish) brown, or a "warm gray." But obviously a lot of people equate sepia with brown. Very interesting!

 

Thanks for the compliment, and for your thoughts. I learned from this comparison that whatever thought one has in his head about what tone sepia should be, there is an ink to match. I'm curious which ink is the closest match to your idea of sepia? For me it has always been either the reddish tone of OMAS Sepia and the greyish brown of R&K Sepia. In fact, the wide difference between these two inks, and between a few others, is what led me to undertake the comparison.

 

I'm on the R&K Sepia end of the scale. The Pilot Iroshizuku yama-guri is about as brown as I can go and still consider it "sepia." What a fun exercise! There are definitely some new inks on my wish list!

 

BTW where did you buy R&K? The more I look at your sample, the more I like it. And, did you test any for water resistance? That's important to me... Thanks!

 

– MJ

 

 

 

[dcpritch]

JH Cacao du Bresil is indeed an unusual color. I would call it a steel grey, no brown in it at all. Though I think it is outside the spectrum of what most folks consider to be "sepia", it was easy to include it here just to show how far outside the spectrum it really is.

 

Your bottle of CduB has suffered heat distress, aging, or some other problem. That's not at all the color of that ink. The swatches of other inks I have used look perfect on my monitor. I love J. Herbin inks, but I've noticed that the occasional bottle can be off for one reason or another, probably distress in transit or storage. Cacao du Bresil is a lightish brown, grayish, nearly lavender(!) color that is extremely hard to describe but intriguing to see.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I tried again with my bottle of JH Cacao du Bresil, swabbed and also dipped with two dip nibs and a Pelikan M600, and am posting the following image. I bought the bottle new this past summer and it shipped to Northern Minnesota where there is little chance of heat distress; its been kept in a drawer in my office with other inks since then so not much chance for storage issues. It could be a bottle that is off, though I wouldn't know because its the only one I have. Take a look at this:

 

[dcpritch]

... BTW where did you buy R&K? The more I look at your sample, the more I like it. And, did you test any for water resistance?

 

Hi MJ, I got my first bottle of R&K abroad, the current bottle from Ryan Roossinck at Pear Tree Pens (now defunct), and I see that Goulet Pens has them so I have a US source when this bottle runs dry.

 

For water tests, check the links on Part 2 of my Comparison Review, figures 27-34.

[jbn10161]

I tried again with my bottle of JH Cacao du Bresil, swabbed and also dipped with two dip nibs and a Pelikan M600, and am posting the following image.

Still off. Must be the bottle.

 

The swatch in the lower right hand corner here is accurate.

[dcpritch]

I tried again with my bottle of JH Cacao du Bresil

Still off. Must be the bottle.

 

The swatch in the lower right hand corner here is accurate.

 

Darn! The color shown in your link is what I had been expecting, and I was initially surprised by the pure grey of the ink in my bottle of CdB. Thanks for setting things straight.

[asdf]

I tried again with my bottle of JH Cacao du Bresil, swabbed and also dipped with two dip nibs and a Pelikan M600, and am posting the following image. I bought the bottle new this past summer and it shipped to Northern Minnesota where there is little chance of heat distress; its been kept in a drawer in my office with other inks since then so not much chance for storage issues. It could be a bottle that is off, though I wouldn't know because its the only one I have.

 

I sold dcpritch the bottle of Cacao du Brésil he apparently used for these tests. I purchased it from an online retailer with high inventory turnover in mid-June, and it sat unopened (actually, never opened) inside my air-conditioned house for a few months before I realized that I had more inks than I knew what to do with and sold it and two others to dcpritch in September. It does get very hot in the summer where I live. Could the ink have been damaged from a few hours inside the mailbox on a 90- or 100-degree day? In any case, I'm sorry that the color from this particular bottle seems to be wrong.

Edited December 6, 2011 by asdf

[dcpritch]

How long did this take? It is amazing! Thank you for the time and effort.

 

Long enough that my wife is a little cranky about all the extra time I spent at my office nights and weekends working on it, and my clients are a little chafed at not getting their calls returned promptly, and ...

 

I'm glad you appreciate the comparisons. It was actually very fun and interesting, but I'm glad its completed.

[pen2paper]

PR Sepia.. does it consistently have the wonderful shading seen in your tests?

it's not my concept of "sepia", but it is a standout color with effects, all through your tests.

 

 

 

 

[dcpritch]

PR Sepia.. does it consistently have the wonderful shading seen in your tests?

it's not my concept of "sepia", but it is a standout color with effects, all through your tests.

 

Good question - its an ink that is new to me. So here's what I just wrote on a sheet of Rhodia A4 lined 80g/m² paper:

 

 

I'd say that's some of the most dramatic shading I've seen; such a difference between light and dark tones.

[pen2paper]

ooh Thanks! This is what I wished that Golden Brown would do.. this is more of a golden brown to sepia..

gorgeous color! very rich, natural color, like the shadings in animal fur.

[zquilts]

This is the review to beat all reviews! WOW! Fantastic. You've gotten me interested in Stipula's Calamo Sepia now. Their Maschiato is one of my top 5 favorite inks! Thanks so much !

[jgrasty]

Tremendous review. I don't know how I managed to miss this one before now!

[SamCapote]

LOL! Loved your comment on my ink stash. I have a dedicated spare bedroom that my wife tells friends "That's the ink room," as she rolls her eyes hoping they won't want to go in. They always do and it takes a while to get them back out.

 

I have not looked at part 2 yet, but I never thought anyone would give Sandy a run for her money, or be as compulsively "gluteal exit port" as I am....but wow!

I mean WOW!!!

 

This blows my mind, and I had no idea how thorough you were being with this. There are some really beautiful inks that people now know about, including how they shade. That PR Sepia is spectacular you just highlighted.

 

The thing that amazes me is the huge diversity of what manufacturers portray as sepia. It's pretty obvious they wouldn't recognize a cuttlefish ink sac if it jumped into their lap and squirted on them.

 

I cannot imagine how much time this took to do such an incredible job, and I bet this standard won't be bested in a comparison.

 

Isn't it amazing how hard it is to get the scanner image to match what you have in real life? Doing ink reviews made me buy a new Epson V600 scanner, a new VueScan software program to use with it, and some color reference calibration print from a dude in Germany. That all got me a lot lot closer, but still needed some tweaking with the scanner settings, and in PaintShop Pro. The great thing about all of them that you did is people know from their own uses what some of them look like in person, and can then compare your images and extrapolate the other inks they don't have from your scans.

 

I'm saving this thread so if a solar flare wipes out the forum upload image folder, I'll still have a copy. I wear a tinfoil hat, so everything around my computer is safe from alien probes, etc.

 

Huge contribution! Huge!

[pen2paper]

starting to worry whether PR has a good stock of Sepia.

[JimB]

PR Sepia.. does it consistently have the wonderful shading seen in your tests?

it's not my concept of "sepia", but it is a standout color with effects, all through your tests.

 

Good question - its an ink that is new to me. So here's what I just wrote on a sheet of Rhodia A4 lined 80g/m² paper:

 

 

I'd say that's some of the most dramatic shading I've seen; such a difference between light and dark tones.

From this new sample I see that it's got the very qualities I like in Noodler's "Black Swan" inks that I use in my flex pens... Great shading. Dramatic. Very nice, indeed. Looks like I need some. Now.

[JimB]

starting to worry whether PR has a good stock of Sepia.

I'm getting mine now, just in case.

[Bronze]

- Thanks! It's a wonderful comparison.

 

 

Now I need to get a bottle of PR Sepia.

[terpsichore]

This is SO good! I love that you did it with different pens, too. Since I'm new to the fountain pen obsession, I was only beginning to suspect that the same color would look different in different nibs. And, I was really keen to see sepia, in particular. So I feel like this project is done for me personally. (After all, it is all about me ) Thank you, and beautiful work, I love it so much.