International Klein Blue: The Most Perfect Expression Of Blue

[ukobke]

Hello All!

 

Today, an hour ago I received my postcard! A big thank to you all ! (Nice note Martin!). A great color! I could not resist and I went straight to my blue color samples.

 

Klein blue is definitely closer to the unique BayState Blue. Among my 20 blue (different blues), that was the one! So I made about four passes to swab sample next to Klein Blue. No other ink is even close to it...

 

Here is the comparison

 

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/271/75912659.jpg

[rvisser]

When you receive your postcard, please try this experiment:

 

Take out a white facial tissue (Kleenex, etc.), fold it over once and lay it on another sheet of paper or cardboard to take up the bleed-through, carefully swab the tissue with Diamine Sapphire Blue in a good sized area, let us say 2-3 cm, or about 2 inches by 1 inch. Let is set for a bit and then place it on, or next to, your postcard. What is your impression? Try this with all the colors and compare straight across.

 

I would send an image but my scanner, though decent, cannot handle this.

 

Besides, the eye knows best.

 

Best wishes to everyone,

 

rvisser

[marcomillions]

Hi ukobe, rv, and all,

 

This is getting kind of exciting, you know?

 

Good luck to all.

 

Holding my breath.

 

Marc

[MCN]

Today I received an interesting ink that I thought had promise. It wasn't a great match but I did a custom mix and here is a picture of the results. Our postcard is on the left, and a slip of paper with a swab of the mix is on the right. I used the slip of paper to scoop up some ultramarine dry pigment and that is piled up on the left of the slip of paper.

 

 

 

And the custom mix is 1:1 Radiant Blue from Mr. Pen in the UK and Iroshizuku asa gao.

 

The photo makes the postcard look much darker than it is. The ink and pigment are actually pretty close, although in real life the pigment is more visibly darker than the swab and this doesn't come through as well in the photo. Let me encourage everyone again to try to get some dry pigment for comparison. From everything I've read this will be very much like the Klein pieces, though that would be great to verify someday. Mine is Ultramarine Blue made by Enkaustikos.

 

And I've got a couple of other inks coming for further experiments.

[ukobke]

When you receive your postcard, please try this experiment:

 

Take out a white facial tissue (Kleenex, etc.), fold it over once and lay it on another sheet of paper or cardboard to take up the bleed-through, carefully swab the tissue with Diamine Sapphire Blue in a good sized area, let us say 2-3 cm, or about 2 inches by 1 inch. Let is set for a bit and then place it on, or next to, your postcard. What is your impression? Try this with all the colors and compare straight across.

 

I would send an image but my scanner, though decent, cannot handle this.

 

Besides, the eye knows best.

 

Best wishes to everyone,

 

rvisser

 

I had already done it with many other inks. As I wrote, IMHO the best to fit is Noodler's Baystate Blue.

 

Second is Diamine Sargasso Sea, and third is Diamine Saphire Blue.

 

(Marc, surely it is getting more exciting!)

[studiohead]

I am testing against some of my swabs on Double-A paper and I can tell it is not the following

 

Noodler's Singapore Collection Honorable Blue

Waterman South Sea Blue

 

Baystate is indeed very similar but not there. I fear that this is going to be harder. Will try other colors once I clean my equipment.

[marcomillions]

I am testing against some of my swabs on Double-A paper and I can tell it is not the following

 

Noodler's Singapore Collection Honorable Blue

Waterman South Sea Blue

 

Baystate is indeed very similar but not there. I fear that this is going to be harder. Will try other colors once I clean my equipment.

Sound work, studio. Your perseverance is appreciated.

 

On les aura.

 

Marc

[rvisser]

This is a stone found in Yves Klein's studio, right below his easel. NOT! :-)

 

Today I was at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and was quite taken by a chunk of Linarite similar to the one in this image (from Wikipedia - Wikipedia - Linarite LInk). I thought at first it was a stone that Klein used to anchor his easel and that had, over the years, gotten spattered with paint. Very, very, beautiful.

 

Though the holiday season has taken much of my time, I continue to explore the postcard and the various inks. One thing I am thinking about is that if two inks are very close, the one that is objectively the closest may not be the one that is as personally resonant. For example, Noodler's Baystate Blue is clearly very close, but when I write with Baystate, the line has little character, much, if not all of which, is due to its lack of shading, and shading is one of the most important aesthetic elements in my connection with ink. This is part of what I am thinking about.

 

Happy Holidays to all!

[rvisser]

 

My Two Finalists: Noodler's Bay State Blue and Diamine Sapphire Blue . . . And My Conclusion

 

Finally, I'm back after the holidays and after a bout with the flu.

 

I am going to argue that there is an absolute and relative way of viewing our question. My aim has been to find an ink that matches IKB as closely as possible in its pure state, regardless of pen, nib, and paper differences. Once that is established, we might each find a variety of relative states in which that ink is more or less successful at approximating the absolute state.

 

What I have done most recently to establish an absolute state is to use facial tissue as a perfect blotter, totally absorbing the ink into itself in a most self-effacing way, negating its importance except as a substrate that allows the ink to fully saturate and dry in the saturated state.

 

The second thing I did is to daub the two inks that I found to be closest right on the postcard.

 

I have attached an image that shows this. On the left is the facial tissue saturated with Diamine Sapphire Blue, my first choice. After looking at the facial tissue saturated with Bay State Blue for a number of days (weeks?) and not quite knowing why I felt it was different, I now think it moves closer to straight blue. See the photo.

 

The actual specimens that are lying on my desk are more convincing than this photograph. NOTE: In the photo, you can see that some of the red breaks out of the blue but this should be disregarded. If you make a little circle with you hands, like a telescope and hold one over the points I selected and the postcard itself, it will be quite revealing.

 

Conclusion: In its absolute state, or as nearly as I can approximate an absolute state, Diamine Sapphire Blue is the closest approximation to International Klein Blue.

I am happy about this because I find Bay State Blue to be too intense and bereft of nuance in the written line. Though intense, it lacks character.

 

Perhaps I will ask Diamine what they think . . ..

 

Anyone else?

Edited January 2, 2013 by rvisser

[The Good Captain]

I received my postcard and although I've not had the chance to do any proper comparisons just yet, my conclusion based on the inks I have is also in favour of Diamine Sapphire Blue. I do have a sample of BSB but it's not been in a pen yet. My others in the similar colour range are: Diamine Royal Blue, Mr Pen (Diamine) Radiant Blue, Diamine Imperial Blue, Lamy Blue, Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue, R&K Konigsblau and Aurora Blue. I'm fully aware that a lot of these are nowhere near but I refer to them as being in the similar range, to differentiate them from the blue-blacks etc.

So yes, Sapphire has it for me.

[rvisser]

I received my postcard and although I've not had the chance to do any proper comparisons just yet, my conclusion based on the inks I have is also in favour of Diamine Sapphire Blue. I do have a sample of BSB but it's not been in a pen yet. My others in the similar colour range are: Diamine Royal Blue, Mr Pen (Diamine) Radiant Blue, Diamine Imperial Blue, Lamy Blue, Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue, R&K Konigsblau and Aurora Blue. I'm fully aware that a lot of these are nowhere near but I refer to them as being in the similar range, to differentiate them from the blue-blacks etc.

So yes, Sapphire has it for me.

 

I hope you will try the tissue test using Q-Tip, let it dry fully saturated. Good luck, rv

[The Good Captain]

I received my postcard and although I've not had the chance to do any proper comparisons just yet, my conclusion based on the inks I have is also in favour of Diamine Sapphire Blue. I do have a sample of BSB but it's not been in a pen yet. My others in the similar colour range are: Diamine Royal Blue, Mr Pen (Diamine) Radiant Blue, Diamine Imperial Blue, Lamy Blue, Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue, R&K Konigsblau and Aurora Blue. I'm fully aware that a lot of these are nowhere near but I refer to them as being in the similar range, to differentiate them from the blue-blacks etc.

So yes, Sapphire has it for me.

 

I hope you will try the tissue test using Q-Tip, let it dry fully saturated. Good luck, rv

I was going to use one drop from a glass eye-dropper, onto kitchen paper. Although it's recycled, there are no 'additives' like some found in most of the 'facial' tissues we have in the house at the moment. Balsam, 'kind to you nose' sort of commercial garbage. It should give the same sort of results, ie a blob of dry, concentrated ink.

[ukobke]

Unfortunately, I cannot agree.

 

I did not use a tissue, because a tissue is not the appropriate method to use an ink. I used simple 3 different "no name papers" (for similarity purposes), and my conclusion is that Saphire Blue is the THIRD similar among my 20 blue inks.

 

Sargasso Sea is more closer to Klein's Blue than Saphire Blue. (Does anyone else have or made test with Sargasso Sea)?

 

As I showed in my photo above, IMHO Baystate Blue is the most similar color to Klein's Blue.

 

(The amazing thing is that Baystate Blue and Saphire or Sargasso sea inks are obviously different each other)

 

...and by the way... HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The Good Captain]

Unfortunately, I cannot agree.

 

I did not use a tissue, because a tissue is not the appropriate method to use an ink. I used simple 3 different "no name papers" (for similarity purposes), and my conclusion is that Saphire Blue is the THIRD similar among my 20 blue inks.

 

Sargasso Sea is more closer to Klein's Blue than Saphire Blue. (Does anyone else have or made test with Sargasso Sea)?

 

As I showed in my photo above, IMHO Baystate Blue is the most similar color to Klein's Blue.

 

(The amazing thing is that Baystate Blue and Saphire or Sargasso sea inks are obviously different each other)

 

...and by the way... HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll add Sargasso to my tests when I can.

[rvisser]

Unfortunately, I cannot agree.

 

I did not use a tissue, because a tissue is not the appropriate method to use an ink. I used simple 3 different "no name papers" (for similarity purposes), and my conclusion is that Saphire Blue is the THIRD similar among my 20 blue inks.

 

 

Thanks much for your response, though I'm not sure what you mean when you say using tissue paper is "not the appropriate method to use." My aim was to find an absolute value, one that would show the ink in its saturated but dry state, irrespective of its relative applications - different papers, pens, nibs, etc. At this level, I am not concerned with appropriateness, I'm concerned with finding a single truth-value by whatever means I can devise. I fully recognize that Sapphire may be 'down the list' when applied on regular types of paper and that different nibs will add their bias as well. That, in my mind, is another issue.

 

Please correct me if I have misunderstood you.

 

best, rv

[DAYoung]

I do believe this is my favourite thread on the FPN. Not because it is unusually reasonable or helpful--perhaps the opposite. It is, like Klein, a little manic.

 

I'm gobsmacked by everyone's labours, but also by the Quixotic mood of it all.

 

Nicely done.

[MCN]

I do believe this is my favourite thread on the FPN. Not because it is unusually reasonable or helpful--perhaps the opposite. It is, like Klein, a little manic.

 

I'm gobsmacked by everyone's labours, but also by the Quixotic mood of it all.

 

Nicely done.

 

 

I do believe this is the nicest compliment I've received in some time! Thank you, sir!

 

IKB content: marcomillions and I have discovered that the limited edition Kobe Vermeer blue ink from Nagasawa may be a very good IKB candidate. More details to come.

[rvisser]

I do believe this is my favourite thread on the FPN. Not because it is unusually reasonable or helpful--perhaps the opposite. It is, like Klein, a little manic.

 

I'm gobsmacked by everyone's labours, but also by the Quixotic mood of it all.

 

Nicely done.

Thank you, DAYoung: Speaking of the quixotic, there may be reason to believe that Yves Klein was actually a certain traveler spoken of in Cervantes' Don Quixote. Though, of course, Yves Klein would not have been seen in a pair of yellow buskins, or even date colored ones:

 

"Many were the compliments and expressions of politeness that passed between Don Quixote and Don Fernando; but they were brought to an end by a traveler who at this moment entered the inn, and who seemed from his attire to be a Christian lately come from the country of the Moors, for he was dressed in a short-skirted coat of blue cloth with half-sleeves and without a collar; his breeches were also of blue cloth, and his cap of the same color, and he wore yellow buskins and had a Moorish cutlass slung from a baldric across his breast." (From Chapter XXXVII) On Rocinante, on!

 

Perhaps MCN and Marcomillions are on to something. I await their analysis and wonder where I can find this ink.

 

And never forget, DAYoung, we have our eyes on that blue shirt of yours! :-)

Edited January 6, 2013 by rvisser

[DAYoung]

Well, that's fantastic: painting at windmills.

 

If we look closely, we might discover Klein in Moby Dick.

 

As for the shirt, well, I'm a sucker for blue (Philip Hensher's criticisms notwithstanding). Writing with Diamine Sapphire at this very moment...

Edited January 6, 2013 by DAYoung

[rvisser]

Well, that's fantastic: painting at windmills.

 

If we look closely, we might discover Klein in Moby Dick.

 

As for the shirt, well, I'm a sucker for blue (Philip Hensher's criticisms notwithstanding). Writing with Diamine Sapphire at this very moment...

 

Good review! Thank you for alerting us to it. I was not familiar with this book. I particularly liked this part of the many interesting things you had to say: "Richardson encouraged her pupils to draw, doodle, colour in. She taught them the rhythms and gestures of writing, but she also made it fun: spontaneous, inventive, imaginative."

I am also writing today with Diamine Sapphire, I like is less well on Rhodia than on Fabriano EcoQua -- not sure why.

 

Thanks again!