Noodler’s Ink Red Black in Lamy Safari on Quattro artist pad

If you can’t read my writing:

This ink is such a chameleon. On first glance, it’s just brown. Then I start to notice its subtle shading. (It’s more apparent on less toothy paper.)  It’s less red and less black than I had hoped. I wanted a nice, dark red that shades into black. This reminds me more of sepia — good for those who like the old-timey color.  In some lights, it looks a little purple.

Flow is great in the Lamy Safari and drying time is a few seconds. <– I smeared it right after the words we(re) written.  Not bad.

I’m not buying a full bottle of this because I’m not that excited by brown.

I picked this ink as one of the sampler inks from Pear Tree Pens, which lets you choose 4 samples of inks from their huge inventory of inks to try out for about $4 + shipping. I wanted to look for a red ink that wasn’t so bright red that it looked like a corrections ink, so on paper, Noodler’s Ink Red Black sounded like a great idea.

The ink is definitely more brown than I expected in most lights, but under ideal lighting, it takes on a dark purple tint, kind of like the old Chinese purple clay teapots. Unfortunately, most of the time I’m writing, it’s not under perfect lighting, so it just looks brown with some excellent shading.

It’s a good thing I ordered a sample of this before buying the whole bottle or else I’d be stuck with a whole bottle of ink that I wouldn’t use. I wanted so much to like this ink since it behaved so well in my fountain pen and dried at a decent speed, but at least I can take comfort in the fact that there are still a dozen or so Noodler’s inks that I want to try out that might be a color that suits me better.