Inking Step by Step

Hey everyone! Here is a step by step guide to my own personal inking techniques. It is not a how to; everyone's techniques differ and you should always do what makes you feel comfortable.

Step 1: Choose your weapons! I like to keep things simple in life. KISS (keep It Simple Stupid). For me its a Windsor Newtin Series 7 Sable brush, a Micron marker pen size 03 and a Faber Castell PITT Brush marker. I was using FW ink for a while but my local art shop made me try a new brand (for me anyway) Liquitex Acrylic Carbon Black (not shown here). So far no complaints.

Step 2: Pencils! As you can see I do not go into much detail on my pencils. I do most of my finishes in ink (allows me to work faster). My main goal with the pencils is to get down body lines, layout panels and achieve the right facial expressions. I do all my rough in non photo blue then go over the lines I plan to ink with a tech pencil.

Step 3: Brush Lines. Here I use the sable brush to get a clean, smooth line along those aformentioned pencils. I save the very fine lines and the background (which unfortunately in this example there isnt much of) for the next step. Trick to brush; fast movement and dont use just the tip of the brush, try and get the whole brush into it. And don't be fearful! Theres always white out!

Step 4: Fine Lines. Here I go back over everything lickity split with the micron, connecting any open spaces and inking over those fines lines and backgrounds.

Step 5: Last but not least, Blacks! Here is where I make my final lap over the page with the Sable brush and the PITT Brush Marker to fill in any blacks and shading where needed. This is where the page truly takes shape (courtesy of a f*cking tracer). As I mentioned before I have a basic idea of where my light source and shading will go as I pencil but its during this step where I really make the final decision and take the leap free hand.