Ink review - Cult Pens Deep Dark Orange

Before I get into the review, let's start with a short story, shall we?  

The summer before starting college, I was put in contact with my randomly assigned roommate for the dorms.  We chatted a bit about our interests and hobbies, and I asked what I thought was a totally reasonable question - did she have any colors that she absolutely hated, that she could not handle seeing every day?  I've been told this is quite strange since then.  She assured me she did not, though our roommate relationship didn't last past the first semester anyway.

Why would I ask such a strange question?  Because I have a color like that, and it's orange.  I don't mind orange as a color and I even have a few orange possessions, but if I was forced to live with someone who absolutely loved orange and decorated every inch of their space with orange, I would slowly go crazy and murder them in their sleep.

I'm guessing this slight aversion to orange is probably why I haven't tried very many orange inks. But this one was sent to me by my friend Paul and how could I refuse?  (Btw, you can find his review here.)  And it turns out that I actually like this shade of orange.  I don't think I could use it as an everyday ink, but it's certainly been fun to play with for the past week or so.

The Cult Pens "Deep Dark" series is a line of colors produced for them by Diamine that are a bit lower on the value scale than most of their inky counterparts.  This makes them particularly interesting for people like me, who aren't super into garish inks but still want to have some excitement in their writing.  Of all the Deep Dark inks, I would say the orange is the least deep and dark, but it's definitely different enough to make it something special.

In terms of behavior, this ink was right on line with a lot of other Diamine inks that I've tried - decent flow, not much for feathering or bleeding on decent paper, and some shading if you are using it on ink resistant paper (the stuff I use for my ink reviews now is not the best, but I also tried it on Tomoe River and it's fantastic).  But it also suffers from the same shortfall I've seen with most other Diamine inks, in that it is not super high on the water resistance factor.  At the same time, most inks on the red and orange end of the spectrum are worse than this, so I'll take the small amount of water resistance offered as a victory.

Something else interesting that was brought to my attention by my manfriend, Wesley, is that this ink sort of looks like J. Herbin Rough Hematite, at least how Rouge Hematite looks when you use it on paper that leaves a good amount of the gold on the surface.  Like I said before, this is not the most ink resistant paper around, but I did a swab of each to compare and they do indeed look a bit alike:

Deep Dark Orange on top, Rouge Hematite on the bottom

So, I suppose that this ink could be a good alternative to Rouge Hematite if you don't care about the actual sheen and don't want the potential maintenance issues that come with a sparkly ink.

Overall, I really like this ink, but I'm not sure I will be buying a bottle anytime soon.  Being that it is a Cult Pens exclusive, I would have to order it from England and, well, the dollar is not the strongest against the pound right now and then shipping is expensive and yeah... *sigh*  But, if I ever had another reason to order from Cult Pens (I hear they are nice people, so my only reason to not order is the unfavorable exchange rate), I would definitely add on a bottle of this to my order.

Ink review - J. Herbin Bleu Myosotis

This might be hard to believe for some of the newer blog readers, but I used to be a pretty prolific ink reviewer.  I am working on getting back up to some sort of reasonable speed, so hopefully you'll be seeing a higher frequency of ink reviews to come...

This ink came in the form of a cartridge that I purchased in a large group of single cartridges and samples from a member on FPN.  The collection was mostly blues and I had written off quite a few of them simply because I am not a lover of blue inks unless they have some sort of other interesting quality, but after seeing this one I am thinking I should reevaluate my position and try out some more of them.

Bleu Myosotis, or "Forget-Me-Not Blue" is not really a pure blue ink, but more of a dusty indigo.  I find that most of the J. Herbin inks I try are not super saturated, which usually lends them to some pretty spectacular shading.  That was not so much the case here, though I think that shading was lacking because the flow was sooooo generous in my pen.  J. Herbin inks tend to be pretty free flowing anyway and I had just disassembled my ink testing pen for cleaning prior to loading it up, so I think that perhaps my nib and feed were not quite seated correctly.

I assure you that I did actually drip water on the scribbles to the left, but it is not super noticeable.  I would put this ink up there with Poussiere de Lune as being water resistant enough to not worry too much about my writing being destroyed by errant raindrops, but not waterproof enough that I would address an envelop with it.

Overall I think this is a solid performer, though I'm not all that interested in getting a full bottle anytime soon.  I would, however, pick up a pack of more cartridges, since I think it would be a good ink to use in my Kaweco Al-Sport, that is if I ever get it back from my older brother.  (I kid - he is in Rome for the summer and is borrowing the pen so that he can have a reliable writer that will fit in his pocket.  I have no doubt it will come back and be better for the journey.)

Has anyone else tried this ink?  How do you like it?  I know that my writing looks a lot darker than other reviews I've seen, so take the examples above with a grain of salt.