L'artisan Pastellier Callifolio - Omi Osun

[namrehsnoom]

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-tip
• 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation
• An ink scribble made with an M-nib fountain pen
• The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib
• A small text sample, written with an M-nib
• Drying 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

[Cyber6]

Is a pretty blue.. but I thought it was much darker....

 

My mistake I guess...

 

 

 

C.

[visvamitra]

@namrehsnoom - stunning review. Thank you for starting reviewing L'Artisan Pastellier inks. Personally I enjoy them a lot and it's nice to see other reviews of the line. I can't wait for you to review Olivastre. inti, Cannelle and Grenat. As for the color - Omi Osun was reformulated some time ago together with Oconto, Ohlanga and Olifants. I used to have old Oconto which was cold blue, now it's more blue-green ink. It seems older Omi Osun was more saturated - I still have some in Pack Alu and it works pretty well in all pens - wet and dry and is definitely saturated. I'll fill some pen with it and update review with some scan.

 

I keep my fingers crossed to see other Callifolio line reviews prepared by you

[Old_Inkyhand]

You are very talented I love your drawings. This is not the kind of colour I'm crazy about, but I could see myself using it if I didn't have other turquoise/teal inks.

[amberleadavis]

Great review!

[Pensei]

Good review; thanks. I like this series of colors and the performance.

[visvamitra]

So there's more of us. That's good. It seems L'Artisan Pastellier doesn't get a lot of attention here and I believe Callifolio is interesting line of subtly colored inks with great shading potential.

[namrehsnoom]

I can't wait for you to review Olivastre. inti, Cannelle and Grenat.

 

@vis - Olivastre will be the next one. For Canelle and Grenat I'll have to wait until Cat from Sakura has replenished her inventory (I am also still missing Baikal and Yalumba, which were also out of stock). In the meantime there's about 30 inks in the line to go... more than enough to keep me busy for some time ;-)

 

[visvamitra]

Definitely That'll be quite a ride

[Old_Inkyhand]

Their inks seem to be interesting. It's a pity there are very few reviews of the Encres Classiques - I would consider getting some of them along with Inti, Olivastre, Bleu Equinoxe 6 and Olifants, but I can't afford them at the moment. So meanwhile I will gaze at your reviews What an enjoyable and affordable way of beholding the inky beauties!

[mehandiratta]

osum review...

[Sakura FP Gallery]

A very complete and nice review ! Well done !

[mmg122]

osum review...

LOL....agree.