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Ink Battle: Bungubox, Robert Oster, Sailor, and Sailor

Posted in Ink

This is a four-way ink battle is between Bungubox The Ink of Witch, Robert Oster Black Violet, Sailor Ink Studio 752, and Sailor x Tinterías Blue Corn. The ink splat battle is on Canson recycled bristol and the water battle is on Fluid hot press watercolor paper.

Today, while it’s a battle between four inks, it’s a traditional ink battle. I own a bottle of all four inks. When writing, and in my ink swatch book, they look similar enough to be considered dupes, and I wanted to test that.

With the exception of Blue Corn, which is a limited edition of 300 bottles, these are all part of their respective brand’s standard ink lineup.

Between myself and Jim buying inks, we own far too many. This means I have some inks that are incredibly similar in color. And, because of that, I need to figure out which inks to keep and which to dispose of. Sometimes, I have samples of two or more similar inks that I'm trying to decide which to buy, or if I should buy one ink when I already own a bottle of a similar one.

Enter ink battles. I put the similar inks into pens with the same nibs (two Jowo #6 M, two TWSBI F, etc.), or I create ink splats and doodles, to test them out to see which I like better. Or, I may find out that they’re sufficiently different to keep.

You can assume I have no problems with any ink that appears in an ink battle. I may find, when using the inks side-by-side, that there are performance differences, but the point of the battle is to choose a favorite ink, a "winner". These choices are often subjective, and you may disagree with me.

An ink battle — unlike ink dupes — is between inks I like. I enjoy using them enough to have them in my "for use" ink collection — as opposed to my repository of inks for testing dupes. If an ink performed poorly or caused problems, I wouldn’t keep it. And, if that were the case, an ink battle would be unnecessary.

Reminder: You can find all of the ink battle posts on the tag page.

For a person who, like me, prefers colorful inks, none of these is great in a pen. They all look black. And in ink splats, they look basically black. In the ink splats, 752 has a bit of green sheen, and Blue Corn has a bit of black/gray sheen, but there really isn’t anything to tell them apart in the writing.

Comparing Sailor Ink Studio 752, Bungubox The Ink of Witch, Sailor Blue Corn, and Robert Oster Black Violet by dropping ink blots on paper and doodling.
Click the image to view it larger. If you want to know which splat belongs to which ink, you can see each splat labeled.

It’s when you start adding water that these inks get interesting.

First item of note: Black Violet waters down much more quickly than the other inks. With the other three, I started with a 10:1 water to ink ratio, and continued diluting from there. But, with Black Violet, I had to start over a couple times, using 4:1 as my starting ratio, and only got up to 10:1 total.

Once diluted, 752 is a lovely lilac, The Ink of Witch is a heavily muted lilac, Blue Corn is grape, and Black Violet stands out as a purpley-gray.

But things get even more fun when you treat them like watercolors. That’s when you can see their complexity. None of them are “flat” inks, but there is certainly a difference in the amount of complexity visible. 752 is far and away the most fun, but even Blue Corn shows an array of purple and gray.

NOTE: Thanks to Jim for his help with these water tests. He is a bazillion times better at watercolor than I am.

For someone who doesn’t own any of these inks, the clear winner is 752. However, unless you use ink for art, if you have one of them, you don’t need any of the others. When writing with these inks undiluted, they are dupes.

I wasn’t expecting to get rid of any of these inks as a result of this battle. The Ink of Witch, 752, and Black Violet are Jim’s inks; they’re for him to keep or get rid of. But, if they were my inks, I’d let The Ink of Witch go. Blue Corn is mine, but I bought it for the ties to Latin America, so it’s not going anywhere.

Scorecard

While I typically score these battles like a boxing match — 10 for the winner, 9 for the loser — for each category, I had to extend the scores to accommodate the additional inks. Still, 752 wins easily.

The scores for hue are based on the diluted ink colors so I wasn’t scoring them all as black inks. 752 is the prettiest — in my opinion — closely followed by Blue Corn. Black Violet, radically different than the other colors, is one of those inks that looks gray among purples, but purple among grays. The Ink of Witch comes in last for its muted purple that can look almost brown.

752’s half bonus point comes from its minimal sheen.

TraitInk Studio 752The Ink of WitchBlue CornBlack Violet
Hue10798
Saturation1010109
Lightness10101010
Complexity10879
Bonus Points0.5000
Total40.5353636

What do you think? Should I keep both? Which one is your favorite? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed my post. Make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss any posts. I generally post at least once a week.

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