New Sailor Inks

This post comes with a warning. There are mind-altering inks presented here and we cannot be responsible if they break your head. Also, these inks are sold out everywhere right now so you may be required to wait for the next shipment to arrive at your retailer of choice. I purchased my ink from Dromgoole’s who is also sold out but will be restocking as soon as such stock arrives.

Sailor introduced yet another line of inks recently – the Yurameku line. Yurameku consists of nine inks: Kyokku, Kyokuya, Kitsune Biyori, Byakuya, Amamoyoi, Itezora, Seki, Yoi, and Kangyou. The boxes lull you into thinking you know the color of the ink inside. This may be the last time you know anything about the actual color of these inks.

 

You see, you can’t actually put a color name to most of these inks. You may think you can. You are wrong.

My journey with the Yurameku line began late one night when I came across a post on Reddit where an individual had shown a few ink swatches. It took a while to track down any retailer who had these inks, but I eventually found a store in Australia that had them in stock. The next day I went to order them. They were sold out.

 

* My first quick look at the Yurameku inks when I received them. Tomoe River paper.

Same page, different light. These photos were taken one after another, so the ink was at the same point in drying.

I eagerly awaited these inks to be stocked by my closer, US-based retailers. And waited. And checked daily. Sometimes more than once a day. These inks took their sweet time showing up in the US.

At first, I purchased the three inks I found the most interesting from the nine. As with the most recent inks from Sailor, the Yurameku inks are so pricey – $20 for an 18mL bottle of ink. An ink that costs over $1 per mL. Three colors were more than enough for now, right? Within half an hour I had purchased the rest of the line. Goodbye, self-control.

* Four of the Yurameku inks on Tomoe River paper

Inking up four pens, I started testing the ink on various paper types and Tomoe River and Cosmo Air Light are always my first choices.

Do you remember in Mary Poppins (the first one – it’s old but I grew up with it) when everyone takes a spoonful of medicine after being out in the rain? Each person gets a different color of liquid from the same bottle.

That was the same experience I had with the Yurameku inks – each paper showed the ink as a different color. These inks look different on the same paper when they are under different lighting conditions.  Not only that, but the color changed as I wrote. It changed as it dried. It changed after it dried. It changed in the middle of a sentence.

* Same ink, same pens, same lighting, same order on Cosmo Air Light paper

So I’m sorry to report to you that I cannot tell you the color of these inks. I thought trying to describe the color of multi-chromatic or chromo-shading inks was tough. What color is Sailor 123? What color is Sailor 162? How about Troublemaker Petrichor?  How naive I was.

At this point, the name for the ink line – Yurameku – suddenly makes sense. The name translates to shimmering, but not like sparkle. Shimmering as in flickering or shifting. Shaking, tremoring, jolting, vibration. Yurameku is the perfect description for the ink.

My first attempt at communicating the true color of the Yrameku inks – comparing the swatched inks to the package color:

 

 

Sailor did a good job at communicating the overall color of each ink, but couldn’t capture the breadth of the color.

I tried.

That’s how I now know less about the color of these inks. I tried to match them to colors that most people have seen or have perhaps used in order to give everyone an idea of the color.

I settled on grouping the inks and showing several colors that were close.

Kangyou and Kyokkou:

Byakuya, Seki, and Kitsune Biyori:

Itezora and Byokuya (again):

Amamoyoi, Kyokuya, Yoi:

Yurameku inks on Tomoe River paper:

Same inks on Cosmo Air Light paper:

I promise those are the same inks.

Cosmo Air Light paper on the left, Tomoe River paper on the right.

 

int!

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DISCLAIMER: The ink included in this review was provided free of charge for the purpose of review. Some items were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.