Eleven-year-old me is so happy right now. Boogie is the color theme for the 90s. This is Lisa Frank riding a unicorn on roller skates, zooming around the rink to Salt-n-Pepa. It's great. This is the first Kala Ink that I've tried, but I'll definitely be taking a look at their other offerings. Maybe even a few more of these neon colors.
Color-wise, this isn't as eye-searingly neon as I was expecting it to be. It's definitely a bright color, and a rich one, but it isn't glowing like a highlighter would. And while it would have been much cooler if it was highlighter neon, it's much more practical and useable as it is. It retains the attitude of neon, even if it doesn't quite possess the properties of it. I think a lot of that richness comes from the intense pigment saturation of this ink. It's a pigment-based ink, and doesn't look, at first glance, like something that would be safe to put in your pen.
The ink is fully opaque in the bottle. It looks more like nail polish than ink, and that might make any pen user nervous. And while I have it on good authority that it is safe to use in pens, it has a few characteristics that you might want to keep in mind when using it.
I get the sense that this ink is highly lubricated to make up for its natural thickness. I could see an almost separation of layers as I watched a puddle of it dry on my swab card. It would have to be lubricated in order to flow through a pen properly. That lubrication lends itself to a longer dry time. It remained fully wet until about the 25-second mark, when it suddenly became immovable.
This ink is entirely waterproof! No amount of water dripping, rubbing, or soaking lifted it from the page. I couldn't even get it to do a proper chromatography test, because water didn't force it to travel through the paper unless I caught it before it dried.
It also tends to dry out on the nib a bit, leading to some difficulty getting it flowing at first. The first line or stroke after any amount of time (as short as ten seconds or so) would not lay down any ink. Once it was flowing, though, it flowed nicely.
The ink shows lovely shading, but doesn't sheen. It does have a shiny coating to it, though. It dries as a layer on top of the page, rather than soaking in at all, so when the light hits it, you can see it shining off of this coating. It's less noticeable than on a calligraphy ink, and seems to occur mostly where the ink has pooled or concentrated. I can also feel the texture of this coating on the page when I run my fingers over it.
As far as pigment-based permanent inks go, this one is the most fun that I've tried. So many of them are sepia, blue, or black--which is great, too--but sometimes life needs a pop of color. This would make a great ink to use for sketches under color washes, for example. There are lots of uses for it beyond just writing a page of lovely, bright text (though I've been doing just that!).
Given its properties, though, I'd add a note of caution about putting it in fancy pens that are difficult to clean. Its texture is a bit more viscous than a typical water-based ink, and even more than other pigment inks I've used. So I'd expect some additional challenges in cleaning, especially if the ink has sat in the pen for a while. Time may show it to be just fine, but maybe don't use your prized pen as the guinea pig.
My only real criticism of this ink is that it makes me wish I was better at drawing unicorns.
(The Pen Addict purchased this ink from Shigure Inks at full retail price.)
