• Colour: A hydrangea purple, from blue to pink. It is aptly named. Edit: After leaving it in a pen, it will turn blue.

• Special Attributes:
  • Shade: Goodness yes.
  • Sheen: None.
  • Shimmer: Zero.
• Watercolour Usage: Once it dries it is pretty set in. You can see the places I tried to add water and it bled a little, with some of the light blue seeping out, but nothing substantial. Great for writing, not great for blending in to a wash.
• Harkens to Mind: It looks just like the hydrangeas in my garden. Is it warm or cool, though? My scanner says cool, my camera says–dramatically–warm; my eyes say warm but with less drama.
• Similar to: In terms of shade, it has no equal. But in terms of purple, it’s rather like…a bluer version of Robert Oster’s Viola is the best I can come up with. Perhaps if Diamine Violet had shading capabilities, it would be similar.
• Expense (USD): $30/50ml as of 2022.
• Example: Linda and Paul McCartney. My ultimate heroes growing up. No special reason, I just happened to be listening to McCartney I at the time.

Verdict

Yeah, I’d buy it by the case if I were a millionaire. Any ink that shades this well is a friend of mine. Though I like the blue it fades in to, I think it would be best to put in a tighter barreled pen, though. Like an Opus 88 perhaps. It faded for me inside one of those Muft demonstrator pens that used to come for free with certain orders.

Also, a note to add here at the end is, at the time of buying this, I did not know that it was made by Sailor. So that’s an interesting fact.

P.S. You can buy this drawing as a sticker here!