Comments on: Inking a Graphic Novel?

By: 10 Things BEFORE You Start a Comic or Graphic Novel | Making Comics

10 Things BEFORE You Start a Comic or Graphic Novel | Making Comics — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:51:16 +0000

[...] take you a gazillion years. I learned that I didn’t need to ink my pages because I could boost the contrast on pencil lines in Photoshop. That trick alone saved me hours every page. My main character is simple (the cat) and easy for [...]

By: awgie

awgie — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:30:45 +0000

hi…i love these articles, but particularly this one…what kind of paper do u draw on? do u find that at all affects the maintenance of good pencil lines? some papers cause pencil lines to smudge more than others, etc.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:16:35 +0000

Wow! This is the first time I’ve heard of this. Inking has been the bane of drawing for me. But everything I’ve read has lead me to believe that I have to learn it to do comics/GNs. I am going to give this a shot.

By: NoniGross

NoniGross — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:54:53 +0000

so relieved to hear you say this! I’ve been struggling with the fact that all my illustrator friends use trad. media first, then scan. I have been using Painter 11 for everything, until finding your site and realizing I can do it all in photoshop. Not good at learning too many programs at once. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience!

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:28:51 +0000

Thanks holmes, I look forward to reading it. Also, this is probably a no-brainer and already in the works, but I’ll say it anyhow: aside from the reMIND book, I would also be more than happy to pay good hard earned cash for a book form of all the priceless information in this blog. Having your experience and advice as a reference book would be a convenient tool to say the least.

By: Jason Brubaker

Jason Brubaker — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 15:07:15 +0000

Great suggestion Ben! I’ll try to make a post about my light table process. Although it will probably be a little while before I post it. Thanks for the suggestion!

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:24:15 +0000

Hey Jason, thanks for this article. I’ve been wondering about how I’m going to ink the current/first graphic novel I’m working on. I have zero inking experience and was curious if I could skip the step all together. I was even thinking about letting it look like pencil as an artistic style. So this gave me some confidence. However, I dont have lots of extra cash to spend on awesome computers and tablets, so I have to do as much as possible by hand. I have been reading about light boxes for inking and was wondering if you or anyone on here could explain a little of that process? It would help tons. Thank you.

By: Ali Almezal

Ali Almezal — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 04:06:59 +0000

I think people should do whatever works for them with inking. However, I have always loved the lines of a brush, even if it is just a solid line. John Buscema has beautiful brush lines and one of the reasons I read Walt Holcombe’s Things Just Get Away From You is because I thought the brushwork was absolutely sublime. One of the reasons I ink whatever I draw is because the feel of the brush is nice and gets a different final drawing than if I just did it with pencils. Also, it doesn’t take too long for me to do so I just figured “Why not?” The way I see it, a drawing isn’t alive until it’s inked, even if it is inked by a computer.

By: reMIND - Emails Answers: Afraid to Start

reMIND - Emails Answers: Afraid to Start — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 05:06:49 +0000

[...] If you think your inks are bad them make the best bad inked page you can and move on to the next. Maybe you don’t need to ink. Only after you get a few pages under your belt will you start to see what you want to change and [...]

By: Miss Miss

Miss Miss — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 19:29:37 +0000

I am SO glad I came across your blog today :). It is answering so many of the questions that I’ve had about creating my own graphic novel, some that I haven’t even thought to ask. I was already looking into getting a Wacom tablet (along with a shiny brand new big ass Mac), and I’ll definitely look specifically at the Cintiq now. I have a little bit of experience with tablets, but not a lot, so I’d like to work on that as, apparently like you, my plan was to draw rough-ish sketches and then recreate them on Photoshop with a tablet. I’m glad this method has worked so well for you! It gives me some hope in using a similar method. Thanks for the Layers advice too – previously I had always used Brightness/Contrast. I will try it out.

I’m also glad to see someone out there advocating for Photoshop! Every other person that I’ve seen has been all about Corel Draw, but I really am much more comfortable with Photoshop (I have been using it for around seven years, on 4 or 5 different versions).

Anyways, I’m really glad that you’ve chosen to share your knowledge with the online community. I definitely appreciate the advice of someone with more experience than me in this area :)