Ink Shoot-Out : R&K Isatis Tinctoria vs kyo-iro Soft Snow of Ohara

[namrehsnoom]

Ink Shoot-Out : Rohrer & Klingner Isatis Tinctoria vs kyo-iro Soft Snow of Ohara

 

I ‘m a big fan of muted and soft-toned inks, and fortunately there are lots of inks out there that fit my taste perfectly. Kyo-iro Soft Snow of Ohara is one of the great ones among them. Recently, fellow member @JulieParadise graciously provided me with a large sample of the Rohrer & Klingner 2021 Limited Edition ink Isatis Tinctoria – a newcomer that joins the ranks of soft & elegant inks. Another great one, and Julie wondered if it could hold its ground against the Soft Snow. This smells like a challenge to a reigning champion. Time to do a detailed comparison, and find out which of these inks I like the most.

 

Enter... the Ink Shoot-Out. A brutal fight  spanning five rounds, where world-class champions engage in fierce battle to determine who is the winner. Today’s fighters are martial artists that excel in elegant moves to bring down their opponents. In the left corner, from the city of Leipzig in Germany, our challenger: the Kung-Fu master Isatis Tinctoria. In the right corner, from the city of Kyoto in Japan, comes the renowned Tai-Chi fighter Soft Snow of Ohara. Both champions take their place in the ring under thunderous applause from the crowd. The gong signals the start of the first round. Let the fight begin and may the best ink win…

Round 1 – First Impressions

 

The fighters start circling each other in an almost dance-like choreography… soft & elegant moves and countermoves. A weave of energy with some exploratory attacks & feints … a lashing foot-kick that glides off the opponents defense, a lightning-fast arm-strike that is absorbed as by water. This battle ballet is a true feast for the eye. 
Both champions make a great first impression. These inks are greyed-down blue-purples, with a vintage-style faded look that is tranquil and elegant. They are well-saturated, even in finer nibs, and provide excellent contrast with the paper. Shading is just perfect, without too much contrast between light and darker parts, which adds to the aesthetics of the inks. These truly are worthy champions, but there are some obvious differences:

• Soft Snow of Ohara is more of a muted indigo-violet, while the Rohrer & Klingner ink is a blue with some purple-leaning undertones.  This is most obvious in swabs, but also in writing when both inks are put side-by-side. Both inks share the faded toned-down look, and elegant vintage vibe. Wonderful stuff…
• Isatis Tinctoria is the drier ink. Not annoyingly so, but with finer nibs you definitely get more feedback from the paper. Soft Snow of Ohara seems a very wet ink in comparison.
• The kyo-iro ink looks more saturated, especially in broader nibs. Isatis Tinctoria seems to more readily maintain its muted character across the nib range. 

Both inks make a great first impression. My personal preference leans towards Isatis Tinctoria: I really like its muted character with the hint of purple shining through. But talk to me later, and I may have changed my mind 😉 Both inks are great ones, worthy opponents that showed their mastery during this initial round. 

 

The chromatography of both inks looks eerily similar. You would expect much more similarity in the ink’s colours, but with Soft Snow of Ohara you clearly get a more purple-leaning look. From the bottom part of the chroma you can already see that not much ink remains when water is added. 

 

Round 2 – Writing Sample

 

The writing sample was done on Rhodia N°16 Notepad with 80 gsm paper. Both inks behaved flawlessly, with no feathering and no show-through or bleed-through. Isatis Tinctoria feels a bit drier than its counterpart, and writes a bit less saturated. Nevertheless, both inks can easily cope with the complete nib range, writing beautifully even with the EF-nib. With broader nibs, Isatis Tinctoria seems to provide a more consistent look – in contrast Soft Snow of Ohara gets more saturated when using broader nibs.

 

Both inks are elegant shaders, even with the finer nibs. It’s not often that you encounter inks that manage to exhibit shading in an EF nib. Both Isatis Tinctoria and Soft Snow of Ohara can pull off this nifty feat. The shading remains aesthetically pleasing as you move to broader nibs. Due to the low contrast in the saturation range of these inks, there is no harsh difference between light and darker parts. Shading thus remains soft and elevates the looks of your writing. Really well executed!

 

For this round, the focus is on writing, and here both inks look equally well on the page.  Only minor slip-ups… Isatis Tinctoria feels a bit drier, Soft Snow of Ohara shows less consistency across nib sizes. As such this round ends in a draw – not because the champions were weak… not at all. They both delivered a fine spectacle, showing they are really masters of their martial art. The crowd is loving it! 

 

Round 3 – Pen on Paper

 

This round allows the battling inks to show how they behave on a range of fine writing papers. From top to bottom, we have : FantasticPaper, Life Noble, Tomoe River, Original Crown Mill cotton paper and Yamamoto Bank paper. All scribbling and writing was done with a Lamy Safari B-nib. Both champions did well, with no show-through nor bleed-through. But this round is not about technicalities, it is about aesthetics and beauty. Are the fighters able to make the paper shine ?

 

These inks can handle both white and more yellow paper with ease, looking good on either type of paper. Soft Snow of Ohara is a bit stronger in its shading, with more contrast between the light and darker parts. In the scan, both inks look really similar, with just a bit more purple in the kyo-iro ink.  This is most obvious with the naked eye and in swabs. In normal writing both inks can look really similar, with the purple dominance of Soft Snow of Ohara only becoming readily apparent when you put the writing samples side by side. But overall there is just one word for these beauties: WOW!

 

In this round the martial art battle is a feast for the eye. Elegant positions that seem to defy gravity, and that give rise to powerful attacks,  gracefully deflected by the opponent. A crane position explodes into a powerful leg-kick… the opponent flows like water, absorbing the energy, deflecting it and throwing that energy back in an equally powerful mantis strike. And on and on it goes… The crowd roars its approval and is loving every minute of it. Finally the gong rings, signaling the end of this round. Again, no definite winner emerges… these fighters are really well matched!

 

Round 4 – Ink Properties

 

Being the drier ink, you’d expect Isatis Tinctoria to be the faster drying ink but that is not the case. Both inks exhibit similar drying times in the 10 to 15 second range. Both inks also smudge a little when rubbed with a moist Q-tip cotton swab, with the text itself remaining crisp and clear. Neither ink shows any water resistance. Drip water on your writing, and all the colour dissipates leaving nothing readable on the page. Here both inks are equally weak, and neither of them can impress the public. 

 

For this round,  neither ink did much to impress the crowd.  The champions seem to be saving their strength for the final round, simply circling each other without much enthousiasm. As such this round ends with a draw. The crowd is now getting a bit restless, and is eagerly anticipating the final round.

 

Round 5 – The Fun Factor

 

Welcome to the final round. Here I give you a purely personal impression of both inks, where I judge which of them I like most when doing some fun stuff like doodling and drawing. The drawing was done on HP photo paper, that typically brings out the best from inks.

 

Both inks do exceptionally well, and allow for some nice effects. They both have a fairly medium colour span, that results in subtle colour differences between areas of lower and higher saturation. The contrast is never harsh, which translates to a soft-toned image that looks pleasing to the eye. I really enjoyed using them. From the picture you can see that Soft Snow of Ohara has a deeper saturation point – compare the trees with the underlying rock. With Isatis Tinctoria, you get a more even look, with less differentiation between areas of high and low saturation.

 

In the picture, I used  heavily diluted ink (20:1 water to ink ratio) to draw in the background. The rocks were painted in with a Q-tip dipped in ink. For the trees and the sitting champion I used my fountain pen and pure ink. 

 

Both champions show their best moves: lightning-fast strikes and intercepts, an elegant choreography of dancing warriors. This is martial arts at its best! The stadium shakes with the applause of the crowd. A truly awesome fight! Both inks work superbly as drawing inks. It’s really a question of personal preference: do you prefer the more purple tones of the Soft Snow of Ohara, or the bluer looks of Isatis Tinctoria ? I have no real preference myself: today I would probably choose Isatis Tinctoria, but tomorrow I might be more drawn to the looks of the kyo-iro ink. It’s difficult to choose between two masterfully executed inks. And the judge follows my lead… both champions did equally well, and showed their immense potential. 

 

The Verdict
Both inks are muted, soft & elegant beauties, that work well on either pure white or more yellow paper. They are well-saturated,  and look great in all nib-sizes. These inks even show shading in EF-nibs! During the fight, the inks showed differing styles (blue vs purple leaning), but equally well executed. Both Isatis Tinctoria and Soft Snow of Ohara truly belong to the great ones! It’s not often that a shoot-out concludes without a winner, but in this case both inks rightfully deserve the crown. 
 

[mizgeorge]

Oh happy sigh

 

What a fantastic shootout - two inks I love - for me the R&K just has the edge, but that's purely because I prefer the blue tones, but both are fabulous, and I'm so pleased I have them.

 

Thank you @namrehsnoom - these are always such a huge treat - I know I'll revisit this one many times!

[JulieParadise]

Oh, wow, another amazing, fun, and so entertaining shoot-out! I just love how even on those many different papers both inks behave well and stand strong. 

 

Maybe this also comforts those ink lovers who cannot get their hands on one or the other ink, as the R&K was a limited edition sold out already while the Stationery TAG Kyo-ink might also be hard to get. Soooo ... whichever one gets the chance to buy: Do it! You definitely get a great ink!

 

Thank you for the great double-review! As always: Much appreciated! 

[yazeh]

Such eye candy.... really lovely...but like @mizgeorgemy eyes are calmed with Isatis....Looking forward to many more shoot outs...

[LizEF]

[PithyProlix]

Oh, this really makes me want the R&K even more. Great and fun comparison - thanks!

 

  On 12/5/2021 at 4:03 PM, JulieParadise said:

Maybe this also comforts those ink lovers who cannot get their hands on one or the other ink, as the R&K was a limited edition sold out already while the Stationery TAG Kyo-ink might also be hard to get. Soooo ... whichever one gets the chance to buy: Do it! You definitely get a great ink!

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Great advice. I dawdled on buying the R&K and now it doesn't seem to be available from any of the outlets that have reasonable shipping to me. Drat.

 

I might be wrong but TAG Stationery seems to be pretty good at keeping their inks available, except for their limited editions (grrr).

 

[I started a rant on limited edition ink but I don't want to hijack this thread ...]

 

 

[namrehsnoom]

  On 12/5/2021 at 4:03 PM, JulieParadise said:

…Maybe this also comforts those ink lovers who cannot get their hands on one or the other ink, as the R&K was a limited edition sold out already while the Stationery TAG Kyo-ink might also be hard to get. Soooo ... whichever one gets the chance to buy: Do it! You definitely get a great ink!…

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Yeah… I noticed that the Isatis Tinctoria already reached “unobtanium“ status. But since you provided me with a generous sample, I think I have enough left for a full review (coming up somewhere in the next weeks). This will then be for documentation and comparison purposes, since the ink itself sold out.

[JulieParadise]

  On 12/6/2021 at 6:15 PM, namrehsnoom said:

 

Yeah… I noticed that the Isatis Tinctoria already reached “unobtanium“ status. But since you provided me with a generous sample, I think I have enough left for a full review (coming up somewhere in the next weeks). This will then be for documentation and comparison purposes, since the ink itself sold out.

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Well ... if Rohrer & Klingner was Montblanc, we would very likely be seeing the ink again ... *cough* (several limited edition Montblanc inks have been re-released recently as new limited MB inks, so if an ink lover encounters a feeling of "heck, I might know/already have this" it might be worth checking the product code on the bottom of the glass) *cough* ... In a way that would be nice, seeing an ink again, but R&K certainly will not re-release their limited editions. 

[Aysedasi]

Is it just me or are the names of inks just getting ever sillier....?  I can just imagine when I used to work in an office someone asking me what colour of ink I was using and on telling them it's Soft Snow of Ohara, getting a look which tells me that I'm completely barking......

[Vanleigha]

Fabulous shoot out! Thank you. And so agree they tie and are likely both fabulous. One was panned and I hesitated to purchase and now you make me so much sadder that I missed it!