Octopus Fluids Write & Draw Orange Bunny
Octopus Fluids is a massive ink manufacturer based in Dresden, Germany. The Write & Draw series of inks is aimed at the artist-crowd. They’re pigmented, light-fast, water-fast, and smudge-proof. Octopus notes that they use a “cross-linking binder” in the ink to achieve these properties, and it would be best to clean your writing instruments directly after using them. I’m not sure what a cross-linking binder does, but it seems to work! (Okay, I looked it up. Here’s a post about it.)
That’s common advice given with pigmented inks, but I’ve never worried about doing that. I’ve used lots of pigment-based inks, and they’ve never been problematic for me. I think the key here is that you don’t want this ink to dry out in your pen. You really don’t, and I’ll show why at the end of the post. Don’t worry, it’s not going to ruin your pen, but it could be annoying to clean and you’ll probably want an ultrasonic cleaner to do it thoroughly.
When the ink doesn’t dry out in your pen, though, it’s just fine. I’ve had this ink in the TWSBI Eco pictured above for going-on 10 months now without any issues. Those pens have an awesome cap seal, and nothing dries out in them. Octopus says that they did most of their testing in Kaweco and Diplomat pens, but I still think these Eco pens are the ticket for these inks. (Or watercolor brushes, dip pens, or other art-tools.)
I picked this up from Vanness Pens.
It’s interesting how different the ink looks from these two pens. The Karas pen makes it look much darker and richer. I like the color more from that pen, but it also had a tendency to dry out and I would have a bit of a job getting it started again. The TWSBI’s broad nib shows a paler version of the ink, but it’s still pretty good and I’ve never had even so much as a hard-start from that pen. And the water-proof properties are impressive.
This is AFTER the water test. The only way you can tell is that the paper is a little bit wrinkled from having water sit on it. Impressive! Must be those cross-linking binders.
I really like the way Orange Bunny looks on the Iroful paper. This paper isn’t perfectly white, and the off-white cast looks really nice against the orange. Sort of a tangerine or satsuma look, maybe?
Here you can see a bit of the shine that Orange Bunny has in this picture. Pigmented inks often look like this when you get the light just right.
Below, you’ll see two examples of this ink on original Tomoe River paper.
And here are a bunch of different oranges next to Orange Bunny. I' love an orange ink, but I generally skew more towards the brighter hues of orange. I really need to get that Ikuta Orange into a pen soon!
All of these are on Col-o-ring paper. It’s my go-to for ink swatching. Find it here!
Okay, so here’s the thing I promised you earlier. When this ink dries out, it REALLY dries out. This is the converter from my Karas Decograph after the ink completely dried out in there. It is nearly solid. I was able to squeeze a little out of the end, but not a lot. It compacted into a lump.
The good news is that it was really easy to clean out. I just washed it out. You can take these converters apart, and I just rinsed it out. No big deal. Now, the feed, which I didn’t have a picture of, was more difficult to clean. It needed an ultrasonic cleaner to get the job done. It came out in discrete chunks of orange. Octopus Fluids makes a special cleaner for this ink, but I didn’t know that until a day or two ago, so I’ve obviously never tried it.
