How To Ink A Comic Book Page

Inking a comic book, takes some amount of special technique and a range of inking methods and this is what this hubpage is about, so we are continuing on from how to draft a comic book page and so we are continuing from the same comic book page drawing we left off on that article.

But first I would like to go through the pens and special equipment that you need if your are serious about creating some good quality comic book artwork, now I use a mix of cheap gel ink pens for some of the inking and the ones I use have a really fine nib point that is great for drawing in fine lines on your pencil artwork.

I also use black Sharpie markers too for adding thicker ink lines and as the Sharpie markers are permanent markers they are totally black with no fading on the drawings which make the pages look professional, I may occasionally transfer the drawing later on on the computer and add extra details for the inking if I think something is lacking in lines or detail.

Another thing I have been using is a special solution called process white, which is to basically touch up areas that you have either over inked or smudged with ink over the panel lines, this special paint is like a form of tippex that covers up areas that when you photocopy or scan in on the computer so your mistakes with the ink don't show up.

It is recommended that you draw finished artwork from the outset onto bristol board or some kind of illustration board, but I do not, I would if I was drawing comics professionally, but since I don't, I just use regular A4 size paper as this is good enough to get your stories drawn on.

Aside from ink pens, you may decide that you may want to use brushes or quills for different line weights for your inking and these are best used with Indian Ink which is a solid black ink that is perfect for painting in large areas of black shadow with brushes especially.

Now onto inking the page that you can see below in the videos, I'm used a combination of pens and markers to lay in the dark areas and anywhere I placed crosses in pencil I inked the full area surrounding it, notice also that I straightened up the lines around the panels and thickened them to make them stand out and then later I will lay in some process white on a few parts that either the ink pen clogged up and caused a blot on the page or there was a small greasy finger print in the top right hand corner (should have washed my hands after eating them chicken wings!)

Now I inked in some cross hatching to show some grey areas which adds to the depth of shading and is also a middle ground between the white paper surface and the completely black areas, watch the videos to see some cross hatching inking in action.