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Review: SketchINK waterproof fountain pen ink by Rohrer and Klingner

I've been seeing the name SketchINK appear quite often in the comments section of my Youtube channel and recently someone even messaged me directly talking about it. So I've decided to buy a bottle to try and see what's the big deal, and also so that I can link to my review the next time someone asks for a SketchINK review.

SketchINK is a waterproof fountain pen ink made by Rohrer and Klingner, a company founded in 1892 in Leipzig, Germany. The ink is made of nano pigments which makes the ink lightfast and also waterproof when dry. Since SketchINK is still a pigmented ink, it's good to wash out your fountain pens if you don't plan to use them for days or weeks.


This ink is said to be safe for use in fountain pens.

SketchINK comes in ten colours, namely Vroni, Thea, Marlene, Lotte, Lilly, Klara, Jule, Frieda, Emma and Carmen. Bet you can't guess the colours just by their names. Even the colour label on the bottle is not a true representation of the actual colour. The colour Thea that I bought looks gray but in reality it's actually a very dark brown. I actually like it better than the gray I thought I was going to buy.


SketchINK is sold in 50ml bottles. Each bottle is around US $12 - 15 but the price would of course depend on where you buy it from.

The bottle opening is big which makes filling fountain pens, or using a dip pen or brush easy.


Here's a sketch I drew with the ink and coloured over with watercolour.

This ink dries relatively fast. This is great for those who like to work outdoors or work fast when it comes to sketching and painting.


The ink is waterproof when dry.


Just for comparison, I pained a gray patch on the left with Noodler's Lexington Gray and the right was with SketchINK. Lexington Gray has a cooler colour temperature by comparison. The colour Thea looks slightly like Sepia.


This is Lexington Gray painted over the SketchINK lines.


The ink flows well in fountain pens. The fountain pen in the photo is the Duke 551 Confucius fountain pen. I was using this pen to test the ink flow.


This is ink on smooth Bristol paper. The ink doesn't feather here, as well as on the watercolour paper earlier.


The tone varies depending on certain factors. Thinner lines have lighter values while in concentration the ink looks much darker, almost black.


Here's a clearer look the transition of tones. The ink is relatively dark and transitions to almost black.


This is definitely a good ink for sketching. It dries fast, waterproof and lightfast. So when it comes to coloured waterproof inks, I now have another brand and product I can recommend other than De Atramentis Document Ink.

Highly recommended.

Availability

You can find the inks and more reviews on Amazon (affiliate links below):
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For more art product reviews, visit https://www.parkablogs.com/content/list-of-art-products-reviewed

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