Ink: solid or liquid? 萬世 ink stick from 日本製墨 vs 墨の華 liquid ink from 開明

I have heard people say that, while you can use liquid ink for calligraphy practice, you cannot use it for final works because the ink will run when water is applied (a necessary step for mounting calligraphy works). Solid ink, which refers to ink sticks that are used to make ink, do not have this issue.

So I decided to test if this is actually true.

I have the liquid ink that I usually use, which is 墨の華 from a company called 開明. For solid ink, it is a stick of 萬世 from 日本製墨. I took several pieces of 半紙 paper (around 24.3cm by 33.4cm) and wrote the characters 固形 using ink made from the stick of ink, and 液体 using the liquid ink.

After three days, I sprayed water to wet the paper. This is part of the mounting process. I then checked to see if there is any running of ink.

The following is a closer look at each of them. The first photo is before the paper is wet, followed by immediately after wetting the paper, and after the paper has dried (which I shifted to a white background to better see if there is any running of ink).

Unknown paper 1 (paper that I found lying around, probably left over by my calligraphy teacher)

 

Unknown paper 2 (paper that I got from a distant relative, who was an artist)

 

玉蘭 (the paper that I usually used for submitting pieces in the past for grading; it is machine made but tries to imitate the style of handmade paper)

 

Kuretake practice paper (cheap practice paper for students)

 

白雪 (machine-made paper)

 

雷鳥 (machine-made paper that is of slightly better quality)

 

It can be seen that, for Unknown paper 1, 玉蘭, Kuretake practice paper, and 雷鳥, the words written in liquid ink had some running. Meanwhile, all words written in solid ink did not run. I think we can safely conclude that solid ink does not run, while liquid ink may or may not run depending on the paper.

Of course, 墨の華 is not the more expensive liquid ink that is meant for final works. I do have liquid ink that is meant for final works (got them for the upcoming exhibition) and so I guess I will give that a try to see if there is any difference.