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Looking for a blue-green shade of fountain pen ink to match your brand new Blue-Green LAMY AL-Star? We’ve got 14 suggestions for you! These colors range from bright to muted and from light to dark. Some shades of ink are more blue and other shades are more green. We chose a variety of inks to accommodate the variety of tastes fountain pen users might have. Of course, a photo on the internet isn’t going to give you an exact representation of the actual color. It’s helpful to look at the colors side by side to give you an idea of how they compare. Our list shown in the photo includes:
If you’re not the matchy-matchy type and want a contrasting color of ink that looks great with the Blue-Green LAMY AL-Star our first choice would be blue-black or navy blue, especially Noodler’s Air-Corp Blue-Black fountain pen ink. Black, gray and even dark brown inks are a good match too. What color of fountain pen ink do you like to use with your Blue-Green AL-Star?
There is a fountain pen ink for every color of the rainbow and each of them has its own special characteristics. Fountain pen ink comes in cartridges or bottles that encompass designs from utilitarian to a piece of art that begs to be displayed. A writer could spend a lifetime experimenting and writing with the plethora of inks currently available. So how did these fountain pen inks make our top ten list? Some of them are best sellers, some are staff favorites and others have their own qualities that make them special. We have chosen to list the inks by price, from most expensive to least expensive (this is not to say that whatever is the most expensive is the best). Certainly, our top ten list will be different than yours, so please share with us your favorite inks!
Pilot Iroshizuku Bottled Fountain Pen Inks
1. Pilot Iroshizuku Fountain Pen Ink – Most Beautiful Bottle
Pilot Iroshizuku ink comes in a glamorous modern and sophisticated oval-shaped bottle. This heavy glass bottle even has an indentation on the bottom of the interior to help you use the ink down to the last few drops. Add to this the wide range of colors that express the beauty of nature in Japan and you’ve got a stylish winner! On our list, the runner up in this category would definitely be Pelikan’s Edelstein ink.
Platinum Carbon Black Fountain Pen Ink
2. Platinum Carbon Black Ink
Platinum Carbon Black ink is a favorite of artists that create art with a fountain pen. It is pigment based rather then dye based which makes it very water-resistant, fade-resistant and heat-resistant after it dries. It is often used for drawing along with a watercolor wash.
Omas Sepia fountain pen ink has a modern formula but a vintage, old timey-wimey appearance and it looks fabulous on cream colored paper! The interesting bottle design allows you to tip the bottle on its side while filling your pen with ink which helps a lot when the bottle’s ink level is starting to run low.
Aurora Black Fountain Pen Ink
5. Aurora Black Fountain Pen Ink
Aurora Black ink is our top choice for a friendly, easy to use ink that is a deep, dark, intense black color. It comes in both Ink cartridges suitable for Aurora fountain pens or in bottles so that you can use it with just about any fountain pen.
Noodler’s Bulletproof Black Fountain Pen Ink
6. Noodler’s Bulletproof Black Ink
Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink is a great daily workhorse that is suitable for a wide variety of situations. It has “bulletproof” qualities which means its resists the effects of water, bleach and light. This made in the USA bottled ink is more economical and environmentally friendly than ink in cartridges which many writers appreciate.
Noodler’s Aircorp Blue-Black Fountain Pen Ink
7. Noodler’s Aircorp Blue-Black
Noodler’s Aircorp Blue-Black is Alex’s favorite ink to use daily in any sort of pen including rollerball pens that use fountain pen ink and even in pens where the ink flow tends to be a bit on the dry side. Instead of being a regular black or standard blue color it is an interesting shade of blue-black.
J. Herbin Bottled Fountain Pen Ink
8. J. Herbin is the Lefty’s Favorite Ink
Being a left-handed fountain pen writer presents its own set of challenges. Ink must dry quickly or be smeared all over the page! I’ve successfully used a wide variety of ink without smearing by pairing it with the right paper and a fine or medium nib. I must say though that J. Herbin La Perle des Encres is the ink I always go back to. Love the variety of colors, I can use most of them without smearing and the bottle has a nifty pen-rest.
J. Herbin Vert Reseda Bottled Fountain Pen Ink
9. J. Herbin Vert Reseda
J. Herbin Vert Reseda turquoise ink is Alan’s all-time favorite ink color! He loves this color of French green.
LAMY T52 Black Bottled Fountain Pen Ink
10. LAMY Black Fountain Pen Ink
LAMY T52 Black fountain pen ink is a best seller for many reasons: it is easy to use in any pen, it is low maintenance and good for beginners, the price is economical and black is the the most commonly used color of fountain pen ink. It comes in a cool bottle that includes a handy small roll of blotter tape and it is also available in cartridges for LAMY fountain pens.
We’ve shared our list – now tell us what your top 10 fountain pen inks are!
The Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen is a very affordable recent addition to Pilot Pens available in the USA. The current manufacturer’s retail price is less than $20.00, making it an attractive choice for a first fountain pen, for a pen that you might leave at the office or even for taking notes in class. To help you decide if this pen suits your personal taste, we’ll take a closer look at some of its features.
The first thing you might notice about this pen is that both ends of the pen are tapered making it rather cigar-shaped. The back end of the pen is tapered slightly more than the cap end to enable the cap to be securely posted while you’re writing. The body and snap-on cap are both made of metal for long-lasting use without cracking.
The Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen is available in three different matte finishes: black, silver and a champagne gold. All of these colors come with a silver colored chrome clip, trim and nib and a smooth black ABS plastic grip. The middle part of the pen body is accented by a wide glossy band that is either plain or subtly decorated with dots or a zig-zag pattern.
The Metropolitan comes equipped with a medium tip steel nib. When I compare the line width this Japanese medium nib produces to the line width of LAMY’s German steel nibs, it is somewhere in-between a LAMY fine nib and a LAMY medium nib. Not as fine as the LAMY fine, but not as broad as a LAMY medium nib. The nib on my Metropolitan proved to be a nice smooth writer and the ink flow is generous with Pilot’s black ink. The nib is engraved with some fine lines and says “Pilot M Japan” on it.
The Metropolitan does come with both an ink cartridge and an ink converter which is unusually generous for a fountain pen in this price range. The squeeze style converter allows you to fill this pen with bottled fountain pen ink instead of just using Pilot ink cartridges. The drawback to this style of converter is that it does not fill with a large quantity of ink and since it is not clear you can’t see what your current ink level is. You can purchase a clear piston-style CON-50 Pilot ink converter if you decide you want to upgrade. Or you can even refill your empty ink cartridges using a blunt tip needle bottle. This pen uses proprietary Pilot Namiki ink cartridges and is not compatible with standard universal cartridges. Since the body of this pen is metal, it is not suitable to be converted to eyedropper fill.
This fountain pen currently comes packaged in a contemporary black Pilot gift box that fits inside a black heavy stock Pilot sleeve. This is also very generous for a fountain pen of this price.
The Pilot Metropolitan Fountain Pen approximate weight and sizes are: 0.9 oz, 0.5” diameter, 5 1/4″ capped, 4 3/4″ uncapped, 5 7/8″ posted.
(Pilot Metropolitan Fountain Pen Writing Test)
After writing with the Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen I feel that it really offers outstanding value and quality for a bargain price. The pen is well constructed, writes smoothly and currently comes with extras such as an ink converter and nice gift box. Are any of you writing with the Metropolitan? Would you recommend this as a beginner fountain pen?
As you’re shopping online for a new bottle of fountain pen ink, likely the ink color samples you see on your computer, tablet or smartphone have a big influence on what you decide to purchase. Can you trust what you see on your computer monitor? Do you ever wonder how the ink samples are made?
When we first started producing samples of fountain pen ink colors for our online store, we used a special color calibrated computer monitor and made careful adjustments with graphics software to make sure the color sample looked as close to real life as possible from our viewpoint. The flaw in this method is that most shoppers do not use color calibrated computer monitors. As a result, the ink color samples look different to each shopper because each shopper uses a different monitor or smartphone to view the samples. Since then, we have intentionally purchased computer monitors that are a variety of different brands so that we can compare and see what our shoppers might be seeing. Even so, it is not possible with current technology to make sure that each one of you sees a completely accurate sample of each ink color when you are shopping online.
Other retailers have made ink samples that don’t even display real ink swatches or handwriting at all. Graphics software is used to pick the color and then a computer font that looks like handwriting is used to create a “handwritten” color sample. This also has disadvantages. When you look at the color variations in the ink samples below, can you see how it would be difficult to decide what part of the sample it would be best to pick the color from? A computer generated color sample does not give you any idea of the shading or opacity of the ink. Plus, it still does not change the fact that each of you are using different computers and smartphones that each display colors slightly differently.
If you are a regular shopper at Writer’s Bloc, you may have noticed that many of our ink color samples look like this:
We decided to come up with a standardized way of creating our online fountain pen ink samples so that you might be able to discern some of the ink’s characteristics before you decide to buy. Each sample is handwritten with the actual ink, in the same calligraphy style, using a Brause dipping pen with a Steno nib. The “swish” above the handwriting is made with an inked cotton swab and goes from left to right so that the heaviest ink application is on the left and the lightest on the right. The paper used is always bright white 90g Clairefontaine French-ruled paper. (Note: the ink photos on our website that include the ink bottle or cartridges in the photo are meant to give you a general idea of the ink color and are NOT meant to be the primary color sample for the ink.)
What are some of the advantages of this method? Clairefontaine is known as one of the best papers in the world for writing, and it performs exceptionally well with fountain pens. This paper is very good at eliminating or reducing writing problems that are common on low-grade paper such as ink feathering and ink bleeding through the paper. By the way, if ink happens to bleed or feather while we are making our samples, we do not retouch the samples or re-write them to try and get rid of the feathering – we just use them the way they are to help you discern the character of the ink. The Clairefontaine paper is a bright white color so it does not detract from the color of the fountain pen ink.
Why use French-ruled paper and not blank paper? The lines on the French-ruled paper help you to see how opaque or how transparent the ink is. Can you see the lines on the paper through the ink sample? For example, Noodler’s Eel Polar Black ink is very opaque:
The Brause Steno nib allows you to see what your writing might look like using a fountain pen with a fine to medium size nib. The Steno nib is a flex nib, so the line width in the samples varies. The cotton swab generated “swish” above the writing helps you to see what kind of shading the ink might have. Noodler’s Ink Habannero has some nice shading to it:
To prepare the color samples for our online store, the ink samples written on Clairefontaine paper are simply scanned, cropped and re-sized. That’s it. They are not retouched or enhanced by graphics software in any other way.
Even though we have a standardized system for creating our ink color samples, each of you will see the color a little bit differently depending on your own personal monitor or screen. Each of you will be writing on different kinds and colors of paper, using different nib sizes and you all have different handwriting. This too can affect the way an ink looks as you write with it. Our wish is to give you the most realistic online ink samples possible to help you choose your fountain pen ink!
Not too long ago as we were trying to use an ink converter in a new fountain pen we made an interesting discovery. Not all “standard” fountain pen ink converters are created equal. I’m not talking about the filling mechanism, quality, appearance, length or ink capacity, I’m talking about the part of the converter that attaches to the pen. One would assume that all “standard” converters would be able to attach correctly to all pens that take “standard” cartridges and converters, but this simply is not true.
Take for example the standard ink converter made by Pelikan. It is a good price and has a slightly larger ink capacity than some other standard converters, but it does not attach correctly to all pens that take standard converters. I grabbed my collection of school fountain pens and did an experiment. I tried to attach both the Pelikan and the Monteverde standard ink converters to each one of them with varying success. Here are the results:
Type of Fountain Pen
Pelikan Converter
Monteverde Converter
Pelikan Script
✓
X
Borghini
?
✓
Unknown
X
✓
Plumink
✓
✓
Pilot Vortex
X
✓
Maped
✓
✓
Waterman
✓
✓
✓ = fit correctly
X = did not fit
? = was not sure
Even though both of the “standard” ink converters, particularly the Pelikan, did not fit all pens equally, short standard universal ink cartridges worked in all of the pens.
Our conclusion? If you don’t want any surprises, if possible, buy an ink converter that is the same brand as the pen you plan to use it in. For the most foolproof results stick to short standard universal ink cartridges since they seem to be able to fit into all “standard” fountain pens.
Have you had any similar experiences with fountain pen ink converters?
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