[Drawnblud]

Does anybody have any good advice on inking. I'm trying to learn to ink my own work (y'know, thick lines thin lines, etc.), but I could really use some help. Tutorials would be nice too.
Thank you.

[Ian Jones]

hmm... I have very little inking experience but here are a few suggestions.

Practice heaps, lots of mucking around to see what marks you can produce. Try different types of brushes too. When you come to ink your drawing, make a photocopy and ink it and not the original until you get good. This allows you to be a bit more gung ho and hopefully pull of some nice confident strokes. You'll need to consider almost every stroke you make but you'll probably get into a good rythmm after a little while. Paper choice could be important too, try a few quick pieces of different paper and see which one you like, it's not much of a technical choice... rather just choose the one you like. Inking is fun, enjoy it.

Are you looking for specific info about how to use line weights?

Oh btw, try searching the forum for inking, and maybe google too. This has probably been cvoered before.

Hope that helps.

[MadSamoan]

I'd recommend using a Winsor Newton Series 7 brush that you've handpicked and tested for the best point at the store. The tip absolutely must return to a pristine point when wet. If a hair or two is out of place, look for another brush. Also the bigger size it is, the better. It holds more ink and you can still get super fine lines with even the largest brush size. Take extremely good care of your inking brushes. If a Series 7 brush brand isn't available in your area, try finding the best 'kolinsky sable' brush available.

[bld]

Start with a brush, that will teach you how to control your lines and keep them smooth and non-sketchy.

Once you get good with a brush you may start thinking about using a fountain pen to do some inking, hand spasms won't damage work as badly. Always keep a brush handy for large black areas, no using a sharpie to fill in huge black spots.

If you can, get a hold of someone elses pencils, this will help you a great deal in learning the proper inking techniques. Inking your own pencils will make it difficult to improve because its hard to add anything to your own work, and any errors in it may not be caught by you, because it is your work. Inking someone elses pencils also teaches you adjust to different methods.

[plastikman]

haha for this you should look into caligraphy pens these pens are mostly used by comic illustrators..but other pen you might want to look into is called micron pens...but all in all they take a while to get use to because to get that thick to thin look with the caligraphy pens you have to press a little hard on corners and stuff...but good luck!