What is inking?

Inking is the art of going over a penciled drawing with ink before it heads over to a colorist or sees print. It would be easy to call inking tracing; however inking is lot more involved than that. An inker's job is to add texture and form. I think Banky Edwards, of Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, defined it well when he said, "It's not tracing, alright. I add depth and shading to give the image more definition; only then does the drawing truly take shape." Another job of the inker is to give the penciled drawing clarity.

You can see the steps I go through below illustrated here: Ben Soto's Demo or below. (You can click on the images to make them larger.)

Inking Tools

For this tutorial I'll be using crow-quill pens, head sizes: 513 bowl pointed and 104. I'll also be using a #3 sable round-tip brush, a rag to clean and dry my quill tips and a jar of water to keep pens and brushes wet.

• Ec Comics For Sale

• Toms Comics

  Locate Steve's Comic Relief in Toms River, New Jersey 08753 - 732-244-6226. Get phone numbers, driving directions, maps, review, comments and more.

• Us Acres Comics

• Secretplot Comics

  Secret Plot Deep (1998) Search for 'Secret Plot Deep' on eBay Publisher: Eros Comix (Fantagraphics Books) Publication Date: June 1998 - August 1998

• Casotto Comics

  Original comic art on Comic Art Fans matching the keyword(s) Giovanna Casotto. Comic art shown is owned by CAF Gallery Members.