HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 5
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
A couple of weeks back I promised I’d talk about the tendencies of the brush, but it hit me that before I do, I need to discuss the different ways you can move the brush using different parts of your body. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so you should try to learn them all if you can.
Inking from the fingers means …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 6
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Last week I began a discussion of the different ways you can control the brush using different parts of your body. Working from the fingers gives you consistent lines of no longer than about half an inch. Working from the wrist produces consistent lines of no more than 2 to 4 inches. Combined, these two methods are useful for …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 7
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
One of the things that separates the brush from the dip pen is its versatility in stroke direction. While the pen can catch on the surface of the paper if pushing it in the direction of the point — causing it to blot, spatter ink, dig into the paper, or sometimes even break the nib — a brush can make a nice stroke in any direction. It’s one of the great benefits of using a brush over pen and ink.
As I mentioned last week when discussing methods of controlling the brush, there are always two directions to any stroke …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 8
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Unlike the brush, a pencil has a rigid tip. Assuming it’s sharpened to a good point, this means that whatever direction you draw across the paper, the pencil will give you an identical line. Why? Because the rigid tip of the pencil guarantees that an identical point is presented to the paper no matter which direction you move the pencil (assuming you hold the pencil relatively vertical).
The brush, on the other hand …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 9
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Think of the brush tip as a flexible inverted cone. When held straight up and down and lowered onto the paper – without any other corresponding movement being made – the mark the tip makes will at first be a tiny dot. As soon as you add any pressure whatsoever, though, the flexible hairs begin to fold resulting in a blob whose shape, though often somewhat circular, is actually quite …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 10
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Before we return to talking about the marks the brush wants to make, let me digress for a moment.
While at the San Diego Comic-Con this past week, I was asked on several occasions about some of the more practical aspects of inking, so I thought I’d take today and next week to talk about my process for inking a comic page. …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 11
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Some inkers work from the upper left of a page to the lower right, following the natural order that Westerners read. Other artists work from lower right to upper left, which has the advantage of not smudging any pencils where you haven’t already inked. Still others spot their blacks first, that is, they find the areas with large concentrations of black and fill these in, or at least outline them, so they can get a sense of the overall composition of the page (since almost nothing has a greater impact on this than your largest areas of black — step across the room and squint your eyes at a page and you’ll see what I mean). Finally, some artists simply work on whatever interests them at the moment as their whims dictate.
I usually start at the top, attacking whatever is easiest in the first or second panel – that is, unless …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 12
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Let me clarify something I said last week. I mentioned I normally like to work from the upper left to the lower right of the page, finishing all the brushwork in one panel (usually everything but all or most of the background) before moving on to the next panel. However, I also said I try to wait to do the most important figures and close-ups until I’m fully warmed up and confident with the brush, maybe two hours into inking.
So what happens if there’s important stuff to draw in the first couple of panels? …READ MORE »
HOW TO DRAW COMICS:
INKING WITH A BRUSH pt 13
Continuing the real-life saga of one man’s struggle against his art materials!
Now that I’ve set the stage, let me talk about how I attack a typical panel. …READ MORE »