A few questions about Noodler's Heart of Darkness

[misalignedtines]

I'm a professional illustrator and I've been planning on purchasing Noodler's Heart of Darkness.I currently have Noodler's black and Bad Black Moccasin and I wanted to invest in a big bottle of ink next. I mainly use Flex nibbed fountain pens and brush pens for drawing. 

 

Both Bulletproof Black and Bad Black Moccasin are fantastic inks for drawing and have served me quite well.  I generally make a pencil underdrawing, then ink over it and finally erase the pencils with a plastic eraser. The only problem I ran into was I find that a bit of Noodler's Bulletproof Black is erased in this process. The ink appears less saturated on erasing. This did not happen with the Bad Black Moccasin and it stayed saturated. 

I was wondering how Heart of Darkness performed in this regard. Does the saturation reduce when erased off with a normal pencil eraser? 

 

My other concern is people commenting that HOD feathers and writes broader than normal ( an F appears as M. M as B and so on and so forth). People comment that this happens on copy paper. I generally draw on fountain pen friendly sketchbooks or illustration paper. Would HOD behave as mentioned on such paper? Line weights are very important for me. 

 

Any insights on these would be much appreciated

[Surlyprof]

3 hours ago, misalignedtines said:

I'm a professional illustrator and I've been planning on purchasing Noodler's Heart of Darkness.I currently have Noodler's black and Bad Black Moccasin and I wanted to invest in a big bottle of ink next. I mainly use Flex nibbed fountain pens and brush pens for drawing. 

 

Both Bulletproof Black and Bad Black Moccasin are fantastic inks for drawing and have served me quite well.  I generally make a pencil underdrawing, then ink over it and finally erase the pencils with a plastic eraser. The only problem I ran into was I find that a bit of Noodler's Bulletproof Black is erased in this process. The ink appears less saturated on erasing. This did not happen with the Bad Black Moccasin and it stayed saturated. 

I was wondering how Heart of Darkness performed in this regard. Does the saturation reduce when erased off with a normal pencil eraser? 

 

My other concern is people commenting that HOD feathers and writes broader than normal ( an F appears as M. M as B and so on and so forth). People comment that this happens on copy paper. I generally draw on fountain pen friendly sketchbooks or illustration paper. Would HOD behave as mentioned on such paper? Line weights are very important for me. 

 

Any insights on these would be much appreciated

 

I struggled with some inconsistencies in the Noodler's Black and Eel Black that I tried before giving up.  They would often look faded.  I liked Platinum Carbon Black but found that DeAtramentis Document Black has become my favorite for sketching, drawing and watercolor.  It has been very consistent, flows smoothly, dries quickly (I'm left-handed), pencil erases without issues, and it holds up to watercolor painting.  I've been using both their Document Black and Document Sepia for drawings.  I also like that I can get the DeAtramentis Document Black in cartridges to use in pocket pens that I carry everywhere I go.  I may try refilling empty cartridges with Document Sepia in the future.

[LizEF]

5 hours ago, misalignedtines said:

HOD feathers and writes broader than normal

While I have no experience with erasing pencil lines under / around ink, I do measure and record this.  You can find all my measurements and links to all my results in my inks spreadsheet.  Of the black Noodler's inks I've reviewed (all using the same nib and feed), here are line widths (in µm).  So you can see that HoD writes narrower than Black.

• Noodler's Black 355
• Noodler's Borealis Black 340
• Noodler's Heart of Darkness 280
• Noodler's Raven Black 262
• Noodler's X-Feather Black 263

As for tendency to feather - all these do fine on FP friendly paper.  On poor paper, only Noodler's Black behaves perfectly.  Here are the images I have for poor paper, in the same order as above.  The top is "puzzle paper" as bad as newsprint or worse.  The bottom (under the horizontal line) is 20lb copy paper.

 

 

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the info about the DeAtramentis Document inks.  I've only tried a couple of them (Document Red -- which I didn't like, and Document Fuchsia) although I have samples of a few of the other colors in that line as well).  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Abel Veloso]

I have a bottle of HoD. I never used it for drawing, only for writing. However, I consider it a generally well behaved ink. Of course, that depends on which paper you are using it and with which pen you are writing, but that's applicable to virtually every ink. It is very permanent. However, I remember reading somewhere that it takes some time to react with the cellulose of the paper and become fully permanent. Maybe more experienced users can clarify this further...