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Inking in Detail In this tutorial I will go into inking an image in a bit more detail than my other tutorials so far. I hope it will be helpful to some people. MATERIALS: Materials used in this demo are Pigment Liners, Hi-Tec-C pens, Faber Castell Brush Pens, and copy/office paper. Please see Inking: The Materials for details on these and other materials.  The SketchBefore you can begin inking you need something to ink. This is a sketch or penciled drawing. These can have as little or as much detail as you feel is needed before you begin to ink. The sketch shown here is a more finished pencil rendering. I wanted to keep my original sketch so instead of inking over it and erasing I scanned the sketch and printed it VERY lightly to a new sheet of paper. This way if I mess up on inking I can always print another one and try again. You'll notice that this sketch is pretty far along in that I've already started to sketch in my shadows.  Basic InkingMost of my drawings start with a "basic" inking (unless I'm using Crow Quill or Ballpoint - I'll cover those in another tutorial). So to do the basic inking I'm pretty much just laying down a fine line (all the same line weight) on the image. You'll noticed I don't outline - my lines have some gaps in them etc. Unless you want the image to look very flat I wouldn't suggest using a solid outline around everything. I do this part using an 03 Hi-Tec-C pen, but a 005 Micron or Copic works too. After my basic outlining is down I can erase the pencil under it, though in this case since I'm inking a lightly printed copy I don't need to. Normally. if you color the image pencil can smear out from under the ink anywhere it sticks out... so you do want to be sure it's all erased!  Blocking in the BlacksNext I'm going to work on putting in the major dark areas. A picture that is inked well will look good without depending on the color, so you should be able to see what everything is by the time you're done inking. To block in the blacks I tend to use Pigment Liners and Faber Castell brush pens, but any larger copic or micron will also work. Notice I don't use any large areas of black or thick lines on the areas in the distance. As a general rule the areas closest to you will have thicker/darker lines AND more detail.  A Look at LightingNow lets take a look at lighting. In this image I want the light to be coming from the MIDDLE of the picture... behind/under the bridge. Areas away from the light I added more black and thicken the lines. Notice how even the moss hanging on the bridge picks up a 3D feels because one side has been darkened - you can clearly see it's growing OVER the bridge.
On the "fuzzy" plants I've clearly darkened the right side and the stems, behind them you can see I've begun shading the side of the tree away from the light. You also want to keep in mind that things overlap. You don't want to have your inking be a confusing sea of black so... pratice pratice pratice!
 A Look at TexturesWhen you are inking you want to make things look like what they are. When inking some people ink, say, a character's face the same way as the clothing. If you're going for a more flat, uniform style, where color will probably identify what things are than inking everything the same way is okay. If you really want images to pop you want to think about each object/area. Here I've shown how the bricks are suggested in the bridge using one style, how the "fuzzy" plants have been shaded with a more "dotted" style, the tree itself with some very specific bark shapes, and at the bottom you can clearly see the texture of the grass vs. the curling plants and the round egg/stone things.
Always keep texture in mind! So where do you learn textures? Pratice! Look at a photo and see what shapes the light makes on grass and trees. Another great thing to do is find a comic book with a really good inker/penciler and study how different artists do water, trees etc. I'd also suggest the DC Comics Guides to Penciling and Inking, and the Dark Horse Guides to comic book inking. These go into a lot of detail about textures for wood, rocks, clothing etc.
 Finished Image Here you can see the finished image. Using the techniques listed above I've tried to show the lighting, texture, detail, and depth without any color. I will be coloring this though, or I would probably do a little more work to pop the right hand tree out from the background. So that's pretty much it, one of the ways I ink. I will try to make tutorials for ball point pen and crow quill pen at some point. |