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Old 11-05-2017, 09:47 AM   #1
Talon87
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Search for a Specific Gel Pen Ink Shade

violet
purple

I want a violet gel pen. Specifically, I want the shade of the ink when dried to look much bluer than redder, to look something like this:




(the center square)

But despite the box label of Pilot Ink Gel pens having a color that closely resembles the violet shown above, the actual shade of the ink more closely resembles magenta, as seen here in between blue and red:



It's very, very pink. I don't want that. Even straight 50% blue 50% red "purple" I would be unhappy with, but this 80% red 20% blue "puuuuurple *IT'S REALLY PINK, SHHHH!*" garbage has left me unhappy.

If I try to reproduce the hexadecimal color, it's something approximating ...

this

So putting the two side by side ...

what Pilot has given me
what I want

So! ... Does anyone here have hands-on experience with this matter, and could recommend to me a specific gel pen which produces ink that, when dried on the paper, very nearly looks like this?
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Old 11-06-2017, 01:37 AM   #2
Talon87
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Looking into fountain pens. Never really used one before. Probably only ever held a dry one two or three times as a child, a wet one only once or twice as a child. From what I've been reading, it seems like if I want to get the shade of violet I am after, I'm going to have to go with actual ink from an ink bottle and fountain pen it up.


As you can see from this sample, the Murasaki Shikibu ink in Pilot's Iroshizuku line of products seems to be practically spot on with my desired hue. Not a surprise: in large part I wanted this color precisely because it lines up with my own understanding of Japanese murasaki. Felt it would be fun to write kanji in a shade that is both lovely and symbolic.

I don't remember fountain pens feeling very comfortable to write with. I vaguely remember them feeling scratchy, sharp, and hard, as if attempting to write with an ink-tipped X-ACTO knife. But then again, I also can't recall any concrete memories of writing with one. And I am fairly positive that most (if not all) times I've ever touched a fountain pen it's been bone dry. So, to avoid buyer's remorse, I'll be trying out any samples that the local office supply stores and arts & crafts stores can and will let me try out. The price tag seems pretty steep for this investment -- $20 for the pen itself (and that's a cheap one!), and another $20 to $30 for the 50ml ink bottle -- so it'll really have to be something I'm certain about wanting if I'm to get one.

Currently, I exhaust gel pens at about a rate of one gel cartridge per month. Not sure how that translates into rate of exhausting fountain pen ink. Really ignorant about how fountain pens work and how much ink you're supposed to administer into the pen per go.
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Old 11-06-2017, 02:35 AM   #3
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This might be a start? It looks like your specific hue of purple is actually on this pen.

I've been faced by a similar situation before but forgot where, but whoever suggested options to me advised I search by custom colours. I used the HTML code and RGB value for your colour, which are:

R: 120
B: 92
G: 180

#785CB4

I simply searched for something in the vicinity of those values.
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Old 11-15-2017, 10:49 AM   #4
Talon87
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After weeks of knotting my hands over it, I finally went and decided to purchase a fountain pen. There is a "Pepsi or Coke?"-like battle between two makes and models in the beginner's pen category -- the Pilot Metropolitan and the Lamy Safari -- and after consulting with the fountain pen community I decided on trying out the Pilot Metropolitan. $15 poorer, it should arrive some time in the next two weeks.

The pen requires a special cartridge converter to be able to use custom ink. That costs an additional $7. It also, of course, requires the violet ink itself if I want to achieve my objective! That will cost me anywhere between $20 and $30 to obtain. I figured for now, for the time being, it makes more sense to only spend $15 on this experiment (if I am to find out I dislike the feel of a fountain pen) than it does to spend $40 on it. If I like the pen, I can spend the additional $27.

One thing I wanted to say, though: the fountain pen community gives meaning to the word "enthusiast." Not since Shenmue have I walked into a community this enamored with and devoted to their hobby. You know how people joke, "ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!" Well, you really get that feeling with the fountain pen community. Doesn't matter whether it's on Reddit or on any of the literally dozens of fountain pen enthusiast web forums -- you witness the same exact scene every time, and it's always one filled with people who talk about fountain pens with as much love and specificity as a master craftsman or engineer.

All I wanted was to write in a pretty shade of purple. lol lol lol lol lol lol
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Old 12-04-2017, 10:46 AM   #5
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Went ahead and purchased the CON-50 converter (which allows the fountain pen to be used old school with ink bottles instead of new school with cartridges) as well as ...


... the Murasaki Shikibu ink I've been eyeing since this thread's inception. I still haven't gotten to use my fountain pen too much. (Been using gel pens for quick and aggressive calligraphy practice in the lead up to my exam yesterday.) But I hope to get to use it more in the coming weeks, and I'm guessing it will take around 1-2 months to exhaust it of its black ink supply. Once that happens, I'll go ahead, give it a wash, install the converter, and start using the purple ink that was my very reason for buying the pen in the first place.

The pen writes very, very fine. It's been a fun experience for me insofar as it's novel / outside my element: I'm a guy who prefers a 0.9mm mechanical pencil, a 1.0mm gel pen, pretty much anything that is marketed over here as "Bold". Smallest I prefer to go is 0.7mm "Medium". The fountain pen I purchased from Pilot is a Medium, the largest they sell in the Metropolitan line out of the box; but as I've been told my countless pen enthusiasts, it's Japanese-made, and the Japanese sizes tend to be overstated by one full size. So like ... a Japanese "Medium" would be an American Fine, a Japanese "Bold" would be an American Medium, and so on. So for me who wants an American Bold ... I'm gonna have to purchase what the pen enthusiasts refers to as an italic nib, something the fancy calligraphers use when they want to make really wide/bold strokes.

Problem is, I haven't been able to find anyone who sells these nibs individually. Admittedly, I haven't looked too deeply yet, including many of the fountain pen-dedicated websites like JetPens or GouletPens or whatnot. Mostly just looked on Amazon, looked at Staples and Office Depot in person, and did a casual Google search or two. But yeah ... it's not exactly super easy to find stand-alone nibs.
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