Sailor Shikiori Wakauguisu 若鶯 – a lazy review

[A Smug Dill]

 

Colour: olive / murky green

Flow: moderate, in that I haven't observed it flowing so dryly that it drew my attention, or so wetly that I needed to adjust what I was doing

 

Feathering: Not observed on Rhodia DotPad 80g/m² paper, looking closely at the thinnest hatching lines, and words/glyphs ‘reverse-written’ with the nib upside-down (i.e. the bottom of the feed facing up)

Show-through: Low to nil

Bleed-through: Not observed

 

Shading: This ink has a lot of range when it comes to shading, but it's unlikely that you'll get the full range along a single pen stroke. Shading is more apparent towards the drier side of the spectrum (i.e. in terms of how much ink per unit area has been deposited); the wetter the stroke, the more subtle the shading is. The shading effect tends to be well-blended, instead of clearly demarcated between light and dark, along a single pen stroke.

Sheen: None observed

Shimmer: None

 

Drying time: Depends greatly on the wetness of the line or mark. Given the broad range of shades achievable with this ink, and the different colour intensities strongly reflect the wetness of the ink mark, a light-to-medium olive green mark dries completely under 10 seconds, whereas a dark murky green mark may take longer than 30 seconds to dry, on Rhodia DotPad 80g/m² paper.

Smudging after fully dry: Didn't happen when I rubbed my thumb over the hatching/stippling panel and the largest Chinese hanzi chharacters

Water resistance: Effectively nil

 

 

My thoughts: A pretty ink for which I have little practical use. I can't ‘afford’ to use it in a wet pen to write in that dark murky green colour that can be achieved, on account of the long drying time; an ink such as Platinum Classic Ink Forest Green would be far more suitable for that, and being water-resistant to boot. This is probably a good drawing ink, but I don't draw in colour all that much at all. As a tester ink, it would be quite apt to tell me how dryly or wetly a pen writes, but then Sailor Shikiori inks are too expensive to use as tester inks.

[AmandaW]

I'm fond of the murky colours and this one is good, but found the water resistance disappointing. I purchased my 50ml bottle in the 'old days' before the price hike, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts, with no intention to replace it when it is gone.

[A Smug Dill]

Just now, AmandaW said:

I purchased my 50ml bottle in the 'old days' before the price hike,

 

I bought the last two 50ml inkpots of it that PenGallery Malaysia found (and put up for sale) late last year. Good price, but not a particularly sound purchase decision in retrospect. But then, I also have some surplus 50ml bottles of Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün, and I don't have all that much use for that ink either!

 

[mizgeorge]

Thank you @A Smug Dill - such a pretty review and beautifully done as always.

 

I like this ink a lot, and I'm glad I managed to get a couple of the old big bottles as I also find the new size impractical and too expensive. I'm not really worried about water resistance, not least because I use most of my inks to doodle and draw with as much as I do to write. Like @AmandaW, I don't think I'd replace it with the new version, but I'm very happy to have it.

[LizEF]

Thanks, @A Smug Dill!  This is my kind of ink.  I suspect I like Rikyu Cha better, and I have so many murky greens, and so much ink, that the chance of me buying this is about nil, but I do love looking at it in your review. And I had the same thought from your water test - it would probably be great for making art.

[namrehsnoom]

The combination of shading and yellow-green-murk looks great - totally fits my preferences. While I’m not going to hunt for it, if it crosses my path, I just might pick it up. Thanks for showing it to us.

[lgsoltek]

Ha I've just read your sui-gyoku review and came here thinking this is another new release from Iroshizuku. I was thinking how this "new Iro" compares with Sailor's Waka-uguisu, only to realise this IS Waka-uguisu. 😂

[A Smug Dill]

24 minutes ago, lgsoltek said:

I was thinking how this "new Iro" compares with Sailor's Waka-uguisu, only to realise this IS Waka-uguisu.

 

I only have Sui-gyoku (and two 50ml bottles of it, given to me on the same occasion, when I was only expecting one and only wanted one ), out of the three new Iroshizuku ink colours.

 

Have you tried Taccia Uguisu?

[lgsoltek]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I only have Sui-gyoku (and two 50ml bottles of it, given to me on the same occasion, when I was only expecting one and only wanted one ), out of the three new Iroshizuku ink colours.

 

Have you tried Taccia Uguisu?

I haven't! It's in my shopping cart, but somehow it's just been staying there for a long time...

[axialix]

These are not lazy reviews by any means. Anyone who takes the time to take write all that text, do the water tests, compare to other inks, take pictures/scan pages, upload them, write the actual post, etc. This is real work as I just recently found out. Thank you for doing these. Greens aren't my colors for inks, but your handwriting is neat and easy to read (the English parts I'm saying).

[agaric]

A huge fan of your handwriting, especially on the all caps in black. And what a pretty and soothing green! I'm curious, how did you achieve the light/dark variation? Was it just a matter of varying the speed of writing?

[A Smug Dill]

@agaric Thanks!

 

I can vary wetness in the ink lines laid down by modulation of the combination of writing speed and downward pressure. Even nominally ‘hard’ nibs are apt to write wetter when the user presses down a little harder, and while some users do so in order to get broader line widths (with or without pursuing line variation within an uninterrupted pen stroke) — which would likely happen from the increased wetness of the line, irrespective of whether the tines bend, ‘flex’, or spread sideways — I do so to emulate a wetter pen.

 

I've come to realise, although I probably was vaguely aware of it before that, when using a Pilot Justus 95 — on which there is a control mechanism for softness or hardness of the nib, across a continuous spectrum — that a softer nib, which only produces a discernible difference on the page when downward pressure is applied, produces a wetter line compared to a harder nib when subjected to an equivalent amount of pressure. I mused at the time that the Justus 95 would make a wonderful ink testing tool, especially for those users who favour writing with ‘Japanese fine’ or even finer nibs, but it's too good and too expensive a pen to be relegated primarily to that role. So I began experimenting varying the pressure in order to get that type of response from a nib whose softness doesn't change; and I found that most nibs will respond, even though one might not want to wield a fountain pen so deliberately heavy-handedly for more than a couple of words or a line of writing.

 

It's also one of the reasons why I've concluded that it isn't worth using multiple pens for testing of a single ink, for demonstration of how writing in the ink will look coming out of a drier pen and a wetter pen.

 

That said, I prefer to drive wetness primarily with writing speed; I'm usually in no hurry to wrap up the review sheet, so ‘quick’ writing is not a requirement or even a preference in my ink testing.

 

 

The move to using a single pen that is capable of delivering different levels of wetness and/or different line widths (since that's the other thing that some forum members seem to, um, insist is what gives an ink review some value) was the genesis of my ‘lazy’ style of reviewing. I'm only going to try to show the range that's achievable with an ink, and leave it to review readers to work out individually in their own time where using the ink with their choice of pen will land inside that range.

 

[amberleadavis]

These are great reviews.

[TSherbs]

I like the color, but I agree: not very practical.

[Audrey T]

Beautifully done, and very interesting. Gorgeous handwriting in all languages.

[pgcauk]

Hmmm, I bought some cartridges of this, mainly because I have a little olive bird that visits my garden each winter when the agave flowers and my Japanese friend exclaimed "uguisu" when I described him. He's a drab little guy but rather charming, and pretty much this color.

It wasn't until I bought the cartridges ($6 for 3! Nicely presented tho') that I realised Sailor cartridges are not standard size, so I can't just test it in any old spare pen, so they got set aside unused.

I have a 1911L in Epinard green with a Zoom nib that drinks ink, this review is attractive enough that I might now pop a cartridge next refill.