Just look at these beauties! Sample inks very kindly sent to me by Claudia! Robert Oster Signature Inks.

And here we go – Robert Oster Signature Inks. Well to start with I had never heard of this brand until Claudia Astorquiza sent me a batch of 16 ink samples ‘out of the blue’.

As you can see, the colours are vibrant and all react well with bleach. Their behaviour is actually not dissimilar to the Blackstone inks. They don’t readily mix with water but creep slowly and surely revealing all their hidden hues at the outer edges of the swatch. One other bonus delight is that they all sheen beautifully in the more concentrated areas! I wasn’t really into sheening – but I am now. Check out that sheen colour on the Deep Sea swatch! I’ll post some more sheen close ups along with the test pieces later.

I can’t not like these – hidden hues, a positive bleach reaction and sheening! From a creative angle these are a great range of colours. As handwriting inks, I can’t fault them either – even the Yellow Sun writes and reads well. If there is one tiny drawback, it’s when blending the inks together. Because they creep slowly you will need to use a little more water and constantly agitate the paper to ensure a smooth blend!

There is a rumour on the web that these are re-badged Diamines! I can assure you that their behaviours in my testing is very very different, so NO! No substance in that one.

These are not quirky like Noodler’s or Pilot, nor moody and subtle like KWZ inks. I would say these inks are well crafted, consistent and very vibrant and for creatives who want to work with strong bright coloured inks (think bright environments – sunshine, blue skies, Caribbean seas!), what’s not to like? I’ll post some test pieces a little later, so stay tuned.

For further information you can contact Rob Oster direct: SIGNATURE@

Once again, many thanks to Claudia Astorquiza.

All tests carried out on Bockingford 200lb watercolour paper.