Umber – Toucan | Wondernaut in the world of stationery wonders

Toucan fountain pen ink is Australian made fountain pen ink that comes in 14 colours that can be mixed with each other to make your own custom coloured inks. The inks are formulated from water soluble dyes with no harmful additives and pH is supposed to be neutral (7). At the moment the inks are offered in glass 30 ml bottles.

These bottles are really nice and fun. They look quite small, I would say it’s the smallest 30 ml bottle I’ve used. I don’t think they’re particularly practical, especially for those who use mainly big-nibbed piston-fillers. With C/C pens you can always use syringe and fill cartridge/converter with it. With piston – fillers it’s more complicated and some nibs will be just too big for this jar.

These inks are made by Tintex. The full line consists of fifteen colors (that, interestingly are described as Technical drawing Inks on Tintex website and marked as such on labels):

Aqua
Black
Blue
Bright Green
Crimson
Gold
Magenta
Orange
Primrose
Royal Blue
Scarlet
Sienna
Turquoise
Umber
Violet

Umber is my favourite one because it’s quite complex. The color is nice to my eyes. As for the writing, experience may vary depending on your pen and paper preferences. It’s true for all inks but in some cases differences in behaviour are negligible, in some cases quite big. In dry pens Umber leaves perfectly legible line but feels dry, especially on cheap copy paper. You don’t get much lubrication so using it in dry pens may not be most pleasant experience in your life. In wet pens, on the hand (take a look at Rhodia and Tomoe River scans) the ink flows very well and leaves much darker, richer line.

I think this ink, especially given the low price, can be nice addition to browns choice. If however you’re not that interested in trying new colors and look mainly for great writing performance, I wouldn’t say this one should be your first choice. It’s good ink, but may feel too dry in some pens.

Ink splash