Union Jack Blue is the middle of three blues in the City of London set. This is a store-exclusive designed by BlueBlack, the wonderful pen and ink store in Seoul. Like the other two sets in the City series (New York City and Seoul), the inks are made by Diamine.

Although similar to many popular sheening blues on the market, Union Jack Blue is a real explosion of color and a fantastic writing ink. In shading areas on coated papers, you find a bright, festive royal blue. It’s particularly attractive and really plays well against the darker, saturated areas. The darker ends of strokes are a nice dark blue, and this is the color you find when writing on uncoated papers, as well.

As you can see, this is a strong sheening ink. There’s a luminous, fiery, explosion of cinnamon red sparkle and shine on saturated areas of the swatches, and it covers large portions of written strokes on coated papers, too.

This is a wet, viscous ink, and on both coated and uncoated papers it dries more quickly than I expected. That said, I did have the usual problems with smearing when you get the heavy sheen. Sheening inks are popular, but I have a hard time overlooking the issue of smearing, so I use them on uncoated papers where it isn’t a problem at all.

I really like the consistency and feel of this ink. There were no problems with feather or spread on any of the papers I tested. Show-through actually quite light, too. For such a saturated ink, this was a nice surprise. Royal blues with pink-red sheen aren’t unusual, but Union Jack Blue is a very nice example. I think this ink will impress fans of this style.

You can find Union Jack Blue and the City of London set at BlueBlack. If you can visit the store, you won’t regret it, but you can order it from their Korean and English websites, as well.

Special thanks to BlueBlack for surprising me with the gift of this set. It doesn’t influence my review in any way, but it is appreciated!