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04/05/2003: inking anxiety
I really need to loose my anxiety about inking drawings. I like comic artwork better when it's inked, my pencil drawings (at least those in comic style) are not done like pure pencil drawings. And yet each time I have a finished or nearly finished pencil drawing I'm afraid to ink. That is because I'm a crappy inker right now, my inks are much crappier than even my pencil drawings. Which is not surprising, considering that what little practice I have with pencils is almost entirely absent with inking.
And it's not just that my line is less than stellar, I'm also afraid to put larger black areas in. Comic drawings look better with black areas in them. It's not even entirely necessary that the black areas are very realistic -- though some sense of light source definitely helps, and obviously it looks better when the shadows are in the right place. The black areas (or just darker or structured areas in other techniques) don't just work as three dimensional thing giving depth to the things in the picture, they also structure the page, making artwork look more alive, dynamic, and interesting to the eye, create drama... In most "classic" comic styles those aren't just shadows like shadows in a naturalistic drawing.
The only way to get better at inking is of course to practice inking pencils. Especially since I'd like to ink more of my pencils with a brush, which I enjoy more than inking with nibs. When it's done right I like the line better, and the brush is more flexible. Also I think that a brush is better suited for my personal pencil style. And I like how the brush feels while drawing better too. Of course controlling a brush and making it produce the effects you want to takes a lot of practice, and it's very different from drawing with a pencil or even a nib. The angle, the pressure, the whole hand movement will change the line. It's what makes it so beautiful in skilled hands. It's also what makes my inking with a brush look so crappy.
I know I'll never get better at inking, never get close to the look I really want for my drawings if I don't start ruining many decent (at least for my personal level), finished pencil drawings with crappy inking. I know that the skill to ink won't miraculously manifest itself, and to practice inking with the brush I need to practice on the rare pencil drawings I complete.
It's still hard.
And it's not like I could practice on photo copies either. Though I might try to trace the pencils with the aid of a light box and basically produce a copy of the pencils by hand to ink those, even though it's a lot of work to manually reproduce the pencil art (and it doesn't always work either, it's not like I could imitate a xerox). But I'm just chicken, I guess.
