15 Pilot Iroshizuku Inks, Very Short Samples

[Dronak]

Hi, all. The other day I was at a mall and stopped by the Pen Boutique store where I saw that they had tester pens filled with all the inks in the Pilot Iroshizuku line. I own a few of these inks myself, and was interested in seeing some of the others, so I tried out the ones I had and the ones I might consider buying. These are mainly blues and blacks, but the grays and browns are here also. Sorry to fans of the brighter colors, but they're not my thing so I excluded them.

As noted, I used the tester pens available in-store, which seemed like a type of pocket-sized pen with a stub or italic nib. The paper was from a pad of Cross-branded paper on the counter. It doesn't seem to be the greatest, but I was mainly interested in the colors of the inks and I think it's fine for showing that. The paper was blank, so to give you a sense of size, I made some measurements. My writing here is roughly 5mm high for letters with an ascender or descender but not both, and the whole scan pictured here is probably about 5cm x 9cm. There's a blank space because that's where I tried to write with Ajisai before I realized it was out of ink. I decided to leave the gap in case I wanted to go back some day and fill it in later.

Generally speaking, IMO, the colors here are generally darker, more saturated, or something like that than they are in my pens. However, my nibs are also smaller. I usually use a medium nib, and these tester pens seemed to be broader nibs. That could be part of the reason for the difference in color, at least in some cases.

As for the inks I've used in my pens: when I use Kon-peki, it looks lighter than this to me, more like Ama-iro looks here. Tsuki-yo looks lighter and noticeably green when I use it (I'd like it better if it looked more like this). My Shin-kai looks about the same, but I feel like it's somewhat lighter in shade than here -- basically the same color, but kind of a little washed out. Take-sumi and Asa-gao are pretty similar here and from my pens, I think. Take-sumi looks black, as expected, but it can look lighter in shade when used in my finer nibs.

As for the other colors: Ku-jaku and Syo-ryo look kind of similar, but the former seems to lean blue while the latter seems to lean green. Personally, I probably wouldn't buy the Shin-ryoku which looks like a pretty standard green, but I included it in mainly to have as comparison with the two adjacent inks. Ina-ho is a little too golden for my tastes, but the Tsukushi and Yama-guri browns look nice, the first seeming to be a bit lighter than the second. With the grays, the Fuyu-syogun seems to have a touch of blue, while the Kiri-same seems a bit closer to a neutral gray to me. I've see them referred elsewhere to as being a cool gray and a warm gray, respectively, which seems about right based on this. Tsuyu-kusa seems to be similar in color to Asa-gao, but in a slightly lighter shade. IIRC, at least some of the Iroshizuku blues are supposed to have some purple in them, but I have trouble seeing it here. Maybe Ajisai, which I didn't get to use, is like that though.

I'm sure there are other, better comparisons of the Iroshizuku inks than this. But after I made this for my own reference, I thought it might be of some use to others and decided to share it. Hopefully it will be of some interest.

PenBoutique-Iroshizuku_Tests.jpg