I was looking forward to testing this ink out the moment I saw it. Day 14’s Inkvent ink is called Red Robin and it’s a standard red ink. While doesn’t doesn’t sound like much, I was looking forward to something a bit different after a pair of darker blue inks.
The color of Red Robin is fairly interesting. On the surface, it’s a fairly average red ink, if a bit on the darker side. There’s no shimmer or sheen to spicing things up, but it shades really well. And it’s in the shading that I noticed that this ink wasn’t completely red. In lighter areas, Red Robin appears orange. This was very noticeable in my Midori test as, to my eye, the who page was less red and more burnt orange. This certainly wasn’t what I expected, but very cool nonetheless.
The writing experience with this ink is in line with the rest of the inks in this calendar, maybe a little better. I had a fairly smooth experience wtih little feedback and consistent lines. I had no ink flow issues or hard starts and, while the lines were a bit wider than I would have liked, they were still crisp and clean.
Red Robin isn’t a very saturated ink, so I didn’t have much trouble cleaning out of my pens. The amount of bleed-through and ghosting that I got was nearly negligible, and the only real bleed-through was after I let ink sit for a while on my Rhodia, which always bleeds when a lot of ink is placed on it. The dry time is a bit longer than average, though not so bad that I was smudging my writing samples, and there’s no real water resistance. The ink smears quickly and washes completely out in some cases. Keep drinks well away.
There’s not much to say about Red Robin. the colour’s interesting and I have no real complaints about anything else. It’s certainly not flashy, but it is a good ink. I think what this comes down to is that I had a good first impression of Red Robin and, while I wasn’t blown away, there was nothing that let me down. Overall, it’s a solid ink and I quite like it.
The Pen Lover's Nook 