My Favorite Calligraphy Inks
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This week I’m sharing my favorite calligraphy inks. Of all the calligraphy supplies – nibs, pens, paper, etc. – ink is probably the one students ask about most. What’s the best white ink for black paper? Which metallic inks have the nicest shimmer? I aim to share my top calligraphy ink picks of every color, consistency, and quality below.
If you’ve had trouble choosing inks for your calligraphy toolkit, I completely understand. To start with, there are so many on the market, boasting such a range of different qualities, that it’s hard to know which one is right for a particular job. To make matters more confusing, lots of inks advertised to calligraphers are not actually suitable for calligraphy, either because they are too watery or they lack good pigment concentration. Before I dive into my favorites, let’s review the primary qualities of a good ink.
Considerations when picking a calligraphy ink are:
Opacity
An ink’s opacity is determined by its pigment concentration. The higher the concentration, the more opaque the ink will be. The real test of a calligraphy ink’s opacity is whether the finest hairlines dry to the same color as the thickest downstrokes. Highly-pigmented inks – like sumi and acrylics – will dry to look just as dark as they do in the bottle. On the other hand, watery inks – like fountain pen ink or watercolor – can create an ethereal look, which might be just the mood you’re going for. (Judging an ink by how it looks in the bottle can be deceptive, as many inks dry much lighter or darker than they appear in the jar!) If you’re using light ink on dark paper, you will need a very opaque ink to stand out.
Consistency
Good ink flow from the calligraphy nib is obviously essential for a good result. Some inks come with the ideal consistency right out of the bottle, but don’t discount an ink just because it’s too thick to use without watering down. Many of the best inks (as you will see in my list below) need to be mixed with water and/or Gum Arabic before achieving the perfect consistency, but when you do this step right, their quality is second-to-none. Unlike thinning out ink, thickening it is much harder, if not impossible. If you simply added too much water to a concentrated ink, leave the jar open for a few days and it will usually evaporate. But if the ink is too watery straight from the manufacturer, there is nothing you can do to make it suitable for a calligraphy dip pen.
Longevity
If you want your finished calligraphy piece to last a lifetime, then it’s crucial that your ink is up to the task. Make sure to pick an ink that is advertised as archival. These inks are Ph-balanced (meaning low acid or acid-free), and lightfast (meaning they won’t fade over time). Very often, they are waterproof, too. Make sure you choose an archival paper, too, because good ink quality means nothing if it’s paired with bad paper!
smell
While an ink’s smell doesn’t determine its writing quality, it does affect the experience of using it! Inks with toxic or strong smells can be unpleasant to use for large, time-consuming projects. Usually it’s the unnatural colors, like neon yellow, or the waterproof inks that have the strongest smells. Certainly this isn’t true for all such inks, but it is an important factor to keep in mind!
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