Colorverse Office Impressions

[Brilliant Bill]

I was looking forward to the Colorverse Office inks. I got four bottles and a sample of Red. The Office Black is back-ordered at Vanness so I'm waiting for that. Overall, I'm disappointed. I should have gotten samples instead of bottles.

The one bright spot is the red. It's a deeply saturated, bright red that doesn't lean pink or orange. For me, it rivals Skrip red as a pure red ink. Unfortunately, water washes it away like love letters in the sand.

All of them seem very dry. The permanent inks are uncomfortably dry, making me think they are the new "iron gall" chemistry. (Like the TWSBI Blue-Black, but the TWSBI is not uncomfortably dry in use).

I'm a bit obsessive about watertightness in inks, so I always give them a soak test. That's about three minutes submerged in tepid water until the paper is fully saturated. The Colorverse permanents are adequate, losing about what you'd expect of their saturation. They're acceptable. The others are not acceptable to me, especially the red. (That's why I have DeAtramentis Document Red permanently installed in one pen.)

The Permanent Black is not as dark as I'd prefer in a black. I didn't do chromatography, but looking at it, it seems to lean more blue than green.

The Photo Black is a gray ink. It looks like a solid, consistent gray, but for me it won't be displacing my Noodles Lexington Gray. The Lexington Gray is absolutely watertight, and it's one of the smoothest, wettest inks I know.

Bottom line, I now have a lot more ink I'll never use!

Looking at the images, I'd say the red is darker than what I see here. The rest seem pretty accurate. Although who knows what you'll see on your monitor!!

The Colorverse Office line also includes: Green, Gray, Blue and Brown.

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