Im my last post I have been talking about pencils, now I’ll procede with the second stage: inking.
Since a couple of years I’ve been using, with great satisfaction, a Pentel Pocket Brush, which is like a fountain-pen (with cartridge!), but with a nylong brush tip instead. The ink it uses isn’t perfect, in fact it’s not pigment based, so you can have some hue shifts in time and it’s not water-proof. On the other hand these issues are largely balanced by the great ease of use! It’s like using a tip felt pen but with the added possibilities (in terms of modulation) of a real brush.
Before I was using the good old Windsor&Newton brush, but I had a lot of problems. Apart from forcing me to a much slower workflow, the brushes wouldn’t last more than a week, then I had to replace them.
My approach to inking is quite simple, depending on the light situation it ranges from near-ligne-claire to chiaroscuro with lots of black. I always keep in ming that I will add a halftone later, so I don’t define everything at this stage. Sometimes I test the light setting on a separate sheet (see: from the storyboard to the final page). I use the brushstrokes in many different ways, as little, thin lines to add texture and detail, in their thicker form to create gradient effects. Thick strokes are really great to draw hair, trees and other plants as well.
Depending on the type of paper, the Pentel can prove to be quite tricky. Sometimes the tip can get too loaded and start to spill a bit, or the strokes become too thick. This happens a lot while drawing details, when you need precision the most! For this reason it’s better to use a paper that absorbs a lot, otherwise you’ll have to keep on “discharging” the brush on a towel.
So here we are at the end of this second installment, if everything goes according to plan, I should be able to post the last part, halftone and finalization, next week on friday!
