This tutorial is for artists who are attempting smooth, comic-style ink lines and having trouble getting the desired results. In this tutorial, you can use any pen you like, from a Staedtler 3.0 pigment liner (as I'll be using) to a Sharpie, a traditional nibbed pen, an ostrich feather dipped in an inkwell, or a live squid. I don't recommend the last, but only because I think that's a waste of perfectly good sushi.

As always with a tutorial, please remember this is just the way I do it. For every rule anyone has ever made about art, someone else has broken it in an admirable fashion. The people who are best at breaking the rules, however, usually know them, so

Sketch something, anything. A lot of beginning inkers tell me they're hesitant to ink their good work, because they're terrified they'll ruin it. The first thing I'm going to tell you is stop thinking like that.

If you're reading this tutorial, you want to attempt a comic book style. You need to understand right now that comics are not Renaissance paintings. Their value as art is no less, of course, but they are by nature fast and free. It's not quantity over quality so much as it is a different kind of quality. A good comic book drawing needs loose, quick work to convey motion and emotion--not panicky, jittery lines that each take you a month to draw, or even perfect lines that look nice but don't appear mobile.

Just let go. Mistakes are natural. In fact, as you get better, you'll begin to see mistakes in most professional comics. You don't despise their art for it, so stop hating yours.

 

Line "A" has nearly equal pressure along the entire line. "A" should be used for flat surfaces, length fabric wrinkles, and occasionally hair.

The picture on the left has "A" lines mostly in the clothing outlines and that weird cartoon chin.		 Line "B" is created by pressing the pen harder at the beginning of a stroke, and lifting it away from the paper toward the end.

In the picture at left, "B" lines would show up in the hair, facial features, and fabric folds.

Ink the sketch, running over ever line just once. The pencil lines are there as a guide; if you focus on following them too closely, your linework will suffer. There is a very real difference between a cramped, desperately perfect hand and a relaxed, confident one, and people can tell. They don't have to watch how slowly and tediously you inked to notice the constipated result in the finished drawing.

( Look, the leg on the left is fatter than the leg on the right. Guess what? I don't care, and neither should you! You're not doing this to stress yourself out, are you? If you are, it's kind of a lame way to acquire anxiety disorders. I recommend you take up juggling alligators or a high-tier corporate position.)

You'll notice I added little "X" marks. Those are places I'm going to black in with a Sharpie. If you ever hand your pencils over to someone else to ink, be sure to put those little marks in first--it makes it so much easier for the inker!

So, now that you've inked it? Go ink it again.

This second time, you're going to play with lines again, giving them more depth and weight. I've never been to art school and I don't know the real terms for this stuff, but I hope you can understand from my examples if not the words. Check these out:

Line "C" looks fine. It's an ordinary indeterminate squiggle. It probably has a job temping in human resources and goes clothes shopping at Macy's.

The width of "C" stays the same in corners, edges and curves.
 Line "D" is stylish and interesting! It shops in edgy seaside boutiques and stays out all night doing body shots with its fabulous friends.

"D" changes in thickness to give it depth. The outermost edges of curves are thickest, and where there's a point, I used a "B" stroke to make it sharp and eyecatching.

You'll notice I also turned the wrinkles on the front of the shirt into bubbles. When I black in the shirt, the wrinkles will need to be white. You can paint wrinkles on afterward with white-out, or you can just block out the white space like I did in this picture.

Ta-da! I added a little to the hair, blacked in the "X" spaces, and then I got up and did a little dance, to promote a healthy circulatory system and my oversized ego.

I urge you to look at some popular online comics and see if you can spot these inking principles in really famous work. Penny Arcade, Sinfest, PVP... Practically any really popular webcomic or print comic is going to employ some of what I've shown here.

I cleaned up the image with Brightness&Contrast and the Pencil tool (which I used to draw white over some of the smudges that the B&C didn't cut out).

I hope this was helpful, and if not, I hope it was at least fun.













 
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