Iroful vs. Hahnemühle

 

Iroful paper: a geeky experiment

The Well-Appointed Desk recently published my review of Sakae Iroful paper. If you’re a fountain pen user, you probably already know about Tomoe River and other brands of papers made especially for fountain pens to enhance the sheen and shading of inks and eliminate feathering. Iroful paper was initially brought to my attention by a friend who writes with both pencil and fountain pen, and he said this paper was an enjoyable experience with both. I found this fascinating because fountain pens and pencils seem to have opposing requirements. Anyway, please go read the review for my thoughts on that.

Testing the paper for the review showed that while the surface is, indeed, pleasant for use with both pencils and inks, it’s not ideal for enhancing water-soluble materials. This did not surprise me – the surface feels like the opposite of watercolor paper, for example – but it had never occurred to me to think about the differences or directly compare a paper intended for fountain pen ink with a paper intended for wet media. So I thought it would be fun for this paper geek to think about this and make the comparison.

11/29/23 Diamine Eclipse ink, Platinum fountain pen (music nib), Iroful paper

When writing with a fountain pen, you want the ink to sit on the surface a while so that sheening or shading properties will have time to dry in place instead of sinking in immediately. A common complaint (especially among lefties) is that these ink-enhancing papers cause inks to dry more slowly, increasing the risk of smearing, and that’s the reason – it’s sitting on the surface longer.

11/29/23 Hi-Uni Deluxe 8B graphite pencil, Iroful paper

But isn’t that a property that a good watercolor paper also has? Watercolor painters want paper with sufficient sizing that will enable the wet pigment to sit for a bit before sinking in so that wet-in-wet techniques can be used and washes have time to flow before hard edges form. 

It seems reasonable to assume that a fountain pen paper would be effective with wet media, too. I don’t know enough about paper properties to understand how these two are different, but it’s easy to show the difference. In the swatches below, I’ve tested Diamine fountain pen ink, a Derwent Inktense water-soluble pencil and a Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencil. The tests were done in a Hahnemühle Akademie Aquarell sketchbook (not 100 percent cotton) and Iroful paper. In each case, I swiped a waterbrush through the swatch. As you can see, the colored pencils look more vibrant on Hahnemühle, both wet and dry, but the ink is more vibrant on Iroful – and an entirely different color. Actually, all the media look slightly different in color on the two papers (but that could simply be the influence of the paper colors). In addition, the fountain pen nib (my hefty, juicy Platinum music nib) left some scratchy-looking marks on Hahnemühle, but it looks much smoother on Iroful (as it should).

Swatches in Hahnemuhle Akademie Aquarell sketchbook

Swatches on Iroful paper

What did I learn from these experiments? Not much, but it gave this geek something new to ponder. Any other paper geeks have theories on why the common properties of these papers don’t have the same result? It can’t be the difference in tooth – hot-press watercolor paper is very smooth. 

Shown here are the sketches I made for the review.

11/30/23 Uni Pin brush pen, Inktense pencils on Iroful paper