Kav's Tips for Comic Artists
by A. "Kav" Kaviraj
Comic book artist, A. Kaviraj,continues his series of providing useful tutorials for comic book artists. This week, he gives tips for inkers..
More and more you need to be an 'all-in-one' artist to break into the industry. That means penciling and inking your own stuff. The reason for this is its so hard to find actual producing artists at the amateur level so finding a penciler to ink or vice versa can be impossible. But that being said, here's some tips for inkers or pencilers who ink their own stuff.
First of all every inker seems to prefer his or her own tools. I like to use Copic markers and brushpens myself. I dont like dipping a brush in ink or the smears that can follow. Sean Phillips likes to use a Pitt pen to outline, then a brush and ink technique with devastating results.
There are two styles of inking-the slick 'comic booky' style and the fine art 'painting' style. I much prefer the latter as I feel the slick look is overdone. Almost every superhero book uses this style and I am sorta sick of it. But if that's your thing go for it. Andrew Currie, Bryan Hitch's inker on the Ultimates is a good middle road inker, part slick, part painter. Awesome.
I like to outline everything first, then color in the blacks, then do the detail work. Cleanup I use white guache. Whiteout cracks and smears-I don't like it at all. One thing new inkers seem to need to work on is the proper balance of black and white. They seem reluctant to blacken in areas-resist this reluctance. A half/half black/white balance seems to work really well. Don't be afraid of 'covering up' your beautiful artwork with black. Black adds solidity to your images.
Also, never try to fake facial shadows. Either study actual faces or leave them off. A lot of inkers use a 'shine' style to depict facial shadows-this looks lame. A shadow is not a shine-it's the exact opposite of a shine actually.
To get to the point where your inking looks pro just takes a lot of inking. I inked about 100 pages before my lines really got that solid-non scratchy unhesitating look that publishers demand. One single badly inked line will stand out like a flashing red light so make sure every single line is perfect. If you screw something up either white guache over it-be sure to let it cure for a day-then ink over it. Or, better, use non-bleed sticker paper or labels from Office Max. Lightbox the image, re-ink and stick down. If you use a thin sticker paper, when you go to scan or copy it the image behind will bleed through and look sucky. Use thick printable sticker paper-Avery not thick enough, but their non see-through large stickers work beautifully. just be careful-the surface is sorta plastic, and while this makes inking a breeze, it can take a while to fully dry. Another option is to use index paper and adhere with thin double sided poster sticker paper. But that paper is kinda thick, and you will have to clean up the shadow lines after scanning.
A. KAVIRAJ: Kav is an artist, teacher, and biologist who lives in Sacramento, California. He is the artist forThe End of Paradise, Rapid City, and Dr Death vs The Zombie. He is the writer and artist for Dr. Death vs. The Vampire. E-mail: ddkaviraj@aol.com
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