Fountain Pen Ink Review: A collection of yellows.

For the past few years, I have taken to collecting inks in the Pantone Color of the Year. This year there were two colors, Ultimate Grey and Illuminating, a bright yellow. A few years ago I spent my Inktober focusing on 31 shades of grey, so I knew if I was going to do anything this year it would need to be in yellow. As there are only a scant two months left in the year, and yellow is the ink I have the least of in my collection, I went ahead and ordered a bunch of yellow samples to try!

My selections include:

• Papier Plume Yellow (30 mL, $8.00)
• Rohrer and Klingner Helianthus Sunflower (50 mL, $11.95)
• Vinta Sunrise Hanan (30 mL, $12.00)
• Robert Oster Aussie Gold (50 mL, $17.00)

Papier Plume Yellow is probably the closest to Illuminating, a bright sunny yellow that is the very color I think of when I think of yellow. While the ink is beautiful and can shade nicely, my biggest complaint about it is that I don’t think it’s terribly legible. While I couldn’t do without this sunny yellow in a rainbow, I just don’t know how practical is it for fountain pen usage.

Rohrer and Klingner Helianthus Sunflower is a gorgeous yellow-orange that reminds me of fields of sunflowers or egg yolks. It is beautifully legible though there’s not a ton of shading in it. I also don’t know if it quite hits the yellow spot for me – it’s just a little on the orange side. I tend to think of this color as  more of a goldenrod?

Vinta Sunrise Hanan is a yellow that leans a bit gold. There is more shading in this one, but it takes a bit of a step back on the legibility scale, particularly with my glass nib. I just love the way it shades on the Col-o-ring card though!

And finally Robert Oster Aussie Gold is a deep golden yellow, the color of summer wheat fields. This one has some glorious shading as most of the Robert Oster inks doo, and is quite legible in writing.

As you can see from my Col-o-ring Oversize, I don’t have too many yellows in the ink stash – Robert Oster Honey Bee and Franklin Christoph Honey Comb cover the gold spectrum, and Colorverse Gluon and Platinum Citrus Black cover the yellow-green/olive end of the spectrum.

In almost any other color of ink I enjoy having a large variety of hues to choose from, but I guess the lighter nature of yellows just keeps me from buying too many.

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• Paper: Baron Fig Mastermind Desk Pad ($16)
• Pen: Delike Glass Signature Pen ($37.80)
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Book ($10) and Col-o-Dex Rotary Cards ($15), Col-o-Ring Oversize ($15)

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