Inking examples

This is a response to Sharon Souter who mentioned she'd like to see some inking examples that I considered to be suitable for comic art. These are a couple of items from my portfolio that I think match that criteria. As you can see the line work is quite bold, bolder than is probably necessary with today's improved reprographics but I like the style that arose through the strictures imposed by reproduction methods, so i tend to stick with this kind of line weight, if i'm thinking comics. I think today, an artist has much more latitude if they want a finer line weight or they can even go into, fine halftone rather those coarse mechanical tints applied in the past.

These scans have been prepared for repo but it really would be more useful to Sharon to show some photos of the unprepared artwork too, so I may update this post when I can dig them out and snap them.

This one's been reduced to about 60% of the original, it was rendered in Indian on drafting film. The broad areas are applied with size a 3 brush, the finer lines with a size 0 that's had the kick on the tip removed by searing the point. Tipping the brush, gives a flatter, more constant line and eliminates flaming which is the tendency for strokes to end in a point. The downside being that you have less control for finer linework. One big advantage with applying ink with a brush is that it dries a lot faster than pen because less ink is applied, this is particularly true on hard surfaces and drafting film is 100% impermeable to ink.

This drawing is about 80% of original size on my monitor, it complements the other one nicely because it's executed in pen on drafting film. As you can see the character of the line work is much more vigorous, there's lots of scratching about, I don't like hatching, so much of my pen work tends to more spontaneous than the brush stuff, with less penciling in of where I'm going to but my strokes. As I mentioned, pen dries slower (a lot slower on drafting film) on all surfaces but the upside is that it needs less retouching, there's a more consistent film of ink applied.

On occasion portions of the work will need to be dried under a lamp before you can finish them. That's not such a bad thing in a working environment as you might think, there's always something to do while the ink is drying.