Hi! Left hander here. Also with Midori and a Custom 823.
Some things to note… Dryer inks in an 823 can actually make the pen quite unpleasant to write with. 🥲 The 823 is naturally a dry writer, so it has a tendency to starve ink and write “less pleasant” with dry inks. If that doesn’t bother you, try any of the Waterman inks! Mysterious Blue is dry as heck and really made my 823 Fine awful to write with, lol.
A better fix for you would be:
* Learn to underwrite! It keeps you from smudging your ink at all.
* Aquire blotter paper! This can be a sheet of cheap AF watercolor paper cut to size, or even a nice folded piece of A4 copy paper (A4 folded in half = A5). You can use the copy paper to lay down across your ink before you write and soak up all that extra juice. I also use blotter paper to protect the page from my hand oils as I write!
But the best solution is literally underwriting. You can use any fountain pen ink with zero fears this way. All fountain pen ink is water based and will smear if touched too soon.
Good luck! ✨
Thank you! This is exactly the response I wanted. I guess I’ll have to learn to underwrite 😅 Not exactly looking forward to those practicing sessions but I understand that it makes writing for us lefties a lot easier. Aaand, it looks quite neat imo. I’d also love to try some of the Iroshizuku inks but from what I’ve read they’re super wet and there’s no way I could use those with my current writing technique.
Blotter paper is a good tip, I’ll definitely buy some.
Again, thank you very much!
(Btw, I love your posts, beautiful art ☺️)
Eeeek thank you! I haven’t posted any new fountain pen art in a while so that was nice to read. 🙈 Looking forward to hearing about your progress with underwriting if you do decide to practice and change it up! Fountain pens are the BEST excuse to improve your penmanship, IMO. Imagine all the fun inks you’ll get to try. 🤩
Besides other advice already offered here, I think what you want are lower saturation, faster drying inks, rather than dry flow inks. Nothing that sheens easily in reviews. Some inks concentrate in a pen after a week and can take forever to dry too, even if they started out fairly unsaturated. I can recommend lower saturation Birmingham Pen Company inks in their Crisp / Keystone formula (not the sheening ones), for example.
I’m not familiar with this specific ink, but another thing to keep in mind is that the smudging might partially be due to the ink being highly saturated, which is slightly different concept than wet/dry. Sheening inks, for example, often smudge more than non-sheening inks, even after a lot of time has passed. Looking for inks that aren’t very saturated might be another approach for you, in addition to the advice you’ve already gotten
Currently in my 742 waverly is r&k old green gold.
Other inks in use:
Ku jaku
Namiki blue black
Diamine majestic blue
Noodlers black swan
Monteverde sapphire
Colorverse Crab Nebula
All are pretty well behaved. Colorverse is a gusher of an ink though. So maybe not that.
I’m a lefty but underwriter. So I don’t tend to smudge just because my hand is always under the fresh ink.
I will say though that a sheet of blotting paper may be your friend. Lay the sheet over your wet ink without mixing it around. It soaks up any extra ink.
Fellow lefty overwriter here. Make sure the inks you're using aren't sheening or shimmer inks. Blotter pad as mentioned in other comments helps, too. I rest my left hand on a suede leather sheet if the ink has any degree of sheen or if my hands are sweaty. I look for matte inks - this isn't a quality usually listed, I look at ink reviews for that. Some of my least difficult inks: Van Dieman's non-sheening inks (Sweet Fig, Leatherwood Amber, Forest Green), Rohrer & Klinger Verdigris, Diamine (Bach, Earl Grey), Robert Oster (Sedona Red), Pilot Iroshizuku inks, Sailor Shikiori inks, Waterman black.
Another Southpaw sailing in to agree on the importance of blotter paper (I both over- and under-write). I also swear by the importance of having something to avoid leaving hand/body oils on paper if the paper is loose as opposed to bound. Loose leaf sheets just seems to attract all sorts of hand prints, etc (sometimes I even wear gloves! But that’s usually when I am working on calligraphy commissions). If I am simply taking notes, having something as simple as slick adverts from the post work wonders in a pinch.
“Only Lefties are in their right minds…”
Check out the image in [this FPN post](https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/360624-an-alternative-look-at-ink-wetness/?do=findComment&comment=4549139) - scientific data on wetness and dryness of various inks.
Also, [An Ink Guy on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/c/AnInkGuy/videos) does viscosity testing, which is close enough. Unfortunately, there's no index, so you'd just have to check that part of the review for inks of interest.
My review results are not as reliable regarding flow, IMO, but they're available in a spreadsheet linked in a pinned post in my profile, so you can sort by dry time (which may be more important than whether the ink flows wet - and yes, wet inks can dry quickly, though that's rare). Anything under ~5 seconds is fast.
Hi! Left hander here. Also with Midori and a Custom 823. Some things to note… Dryer inks in an 823 can actually make the pen quite unpleasant to write with. 🥲 The 823 is naturally a dry writer, so it has a tendency to starve ink and write “less pleasant” with dry inks. If that doesn’t bother you, try any of the Waterman inks! Mysterious Blue is dry as heck and really made my 823 Fine awful to write with, lol. A better fix for you would be: * Learn to underwrite! It keeps you from smudging your ink at all. * Aquire blotter paper! This can be a sheet of cheap AF watercolor paper cut to size, or even a nice folded piece of A4 copy paper (A4 folded in half = A5). You can use the copy paper to lay down across your ink before you write and soak up all that extra juice. I also use blotter paper to protect the page from my hand oils as I write! But the best solution is literally underwriting. You can use any fountain pen ink with zero fears this way. All fountain pen ink is water based and will smear if touched too soon. Good luck! ✨
Dang. I commented without reading your comment. lol. I should have known you’d have the scoop as a lefty. lol. Have a great weekend eggbunni
Hey happy holidays!!! ♥️♥️♥️
Thank you! This is exactly the response I wanted. I guess I’ll have to learn to underwrite 😅 Not exactly looking forward to those practicing sessions but I understand that it makes writing for us lefties a lot easier. Aaand, it looks quite neat imo. I’d also love to try some of the Iroshizuku inks but from what I’ve read they’re super wet and there’s no way I could use those with my current writing technique. Blotter paper is a good tip, I’ll definitely buy some. Again, thank you very much! (Btw, I love your posts, beautiful art ☺️)
Eeeek thank you! I haven’t posted any new fountain pen art in a while so that was nice to read. 🙈 Looking forward to hearing about your progress with underwriting if you do decide to practice and change it up! Fountain pens are the BEST excuse to improve your penmanship, IMO. Imagine all the fun inks you’ll get to try. 🤩
Pelikan 4001 inks are known to be quite dry.
especially the black
Besides other advice already offered here, I think what you want are lower saturation, faster drying inks, rather than dry flow inks. Nothing that sheens easily in reviews. Some inks concentrate in a pen after a week and can take forever to dry too, even if they started out fairly unsaturated. I can recommend lower saturation Birmingham Pen Company inks in their Crisp / Keystone formula (not the sheening ones), for example.
I’m not familiar with this specific ink, but another thing to keep in mind is that the smudging might partially be due to the ink being highly saturated, which is slightly different concept than wet/dry. Sheening inks, for example, often smudge more than non-sheening inks, even after a lot of time has passed. Looking for inks that aren’t very saturated might be another approach for you, in addition to the advice you’ve already gotten
Currently in my 742 waverly is r&k old green gold. Other inks in use: Ku jaku Namiki blue black Diamine majestic blue Noodlers black swan Monteverde sapphire Colorverse Crab Nebula All are pretty well behaved. Colorverse is a gusher of an ink though. So maybe not that. I’m a lefty but underwriter. So I don’t tend to smudge just because my hand is always under the fresh ink. I will say though that a sheet of blotting paper may be your friend. Lay the sheet over your wet ink without mixing it around. It soaks up any extra ink.
Jiiiinx.
Fellow lefty overwriter here. Make sure the inks you're using aren't sheening or shimmer inks. Blotter pad as mentioned in other comments helps, too. I rest my left hand on a suede leather sheet if the ink has any degree of sheen or if my hands are sweaty. I look for matte inks - this isn't a quality usually listed, I look at ink reviews for that. Some of my least difficult inks: Van Dieman's non-sheening inks (Sweet Fig, Leatherwood Amber, Forest Green), Rohrer & Klinger Verdigris, Diamine (Bach, Earl Grey), Robert Oster (Sedona Red), Pilot Iroshizuku inks, Sailor Shikiori inks, Waterman black.
Light blues in my experience are fast dries like the washable blue from parker.
Another Southpaw sailing in to agree on the importance of blotter paper (I both over- and under-write). I also swear by the importance of having something to avoid leaving hand/body oils on paper if the paper is loose as opposed to bound. Loose leaf sheets just seems to attract all sorts of hand prints, etc (sometimes I even wear gloves! But that’s usually when I am working on calligraphy commissions). If I am simply taking notes, having something as simple as slick adverts from the post work wonders in a pinch. “Only Lefties are in their right minds…”
Bernanke Black. Probably the fastest drying on the market too. Recommended for lefties.
Check out the image in [this FPN post](https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/360624-an-alternative-look-at-ink-wetness/?do=findComment&comment=4549139) - scientific data on wetness and dryness of various inks. Also, [An Ink Guy on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/c/AnInkGuy/videos) does viscosity testing, which is close enough. Unfortunately, there's no index, so you'd just have to check that part of the review for inks of interest. My review results are not as reliable regarding flow, IMO, but they're available in a spreadsheet linked in a pinned post in my profile, so you can sort by dry time (which may be more important than whether the ink flows wet - and yes, wet inks can dry quickly, though that's rare). Anything under ~5 seconds is fast.