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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: GOUACHE v. Newer Inks
« on: March 22, 2014, 11:57:12 AM »
I'm still very much at the experimenting stage with gouache, but what strikes me is the opacity, not something you'll get with the general run of dye-based fountain pen inks.
Touching on Noodler's for a moment (always a good subject to liven up a sleepy fountain pen discussion ...) the range is so vast now and the various inks exhibit such a range of properties that it's impossible to generalise. Most flow far too wet for dip pen use as supplied, but a few work very nicely out of the bottle, for pointed pen at least. Golden Brown, for instance, is wonderful.
More generally, iron gall fountain pen inks usually seem to cooperate with dip nibs, so you get that lovely tight line quality along with the waterproofness for envelopes. My current favourite is Ecclesiastical Stationery Supplies Registrars' Ink (just as well since I have a lot of it), but any of the others from Rohrer & Klingner, Diamine, Lamy etc should do well, with the possible exception of the old Montblanc Midnight Blue which was judged not as waterproof as it should have been, hence the recent reformulation. The advantage of these over calligraphers' IG inks is that they're relatively benign as far as corrosion goes - I'm thinking here of Blots in particular which could probably dissolve a nib completely given a week or so.
Touching on Noodler's for a moment (always a good subject to liven up a sleepy fountain pen discussion ...) the range is so vast now and the various inks exhibit such a range of properties that it's impossible to generalise. Most flow far too wet for dip pen use as supplied, but a few work very nicely out of the bottle, for pointed pen at least. Golden Brown, for instance, is wonderful.
More generally, iron gall fountain pen inks usually seem to cooperate with dip nibs, so you get that lovely tight line quality along with the waterproofness for envelopes. My current favourite is Ecclesiastical Stationery Supplies Registrars' Ink (just as well since I have a lot of it), but any of the others from Rohrer & Klingner, Diamine, Lamy etc should do well, with the possible exception of the old Montblanc Midnight Blue which was judged not as waterproof as it should have been, hence the recent reformulation. The advantage of these over calligraphers' IG inks is that they're relatively benign as far as corrosion goes - I'm thinking here of Blots in particular which could probably dissolve a nib completely given a week or so.
