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Your best bet is to become equally facile with both pen and brush. The pen is easiest when you’re just inking black lines, but you’ll need a brush for filling in solid black areas. Of course, you can also use your brush for drawing lines, but it’s morę difficult than the pen—it requires greater control on your part. The lines must be clean, Sharp, and decisive—not ragged or scratchy. Still, we suggest you learn to use a brush—learn to virtually draw with your brush instead of merely tracing the pencil lines. You should feel you’re creating them anew with the brush—feel that you’re drawing them—otherwise the finished drawing may seem stiff and lifeless.

Notice the patches of design below. They were all done with a Windsor Newton #3 sable hair brush. Patches 1 through 4 are called “feathering.” This is when your brush “feathers” a number of roughly parallel lines. Notice how some strokes go from thin to thick—all done with the same brush, by merely varying the pressure you place upon the brush. Patches 5 through 8 were done using the side of the brush. This technique is handy for inking hair on a character’s head. In case you’re wondering, 12 was done by dragging the point of a razor blade along the edge of a ruler.

Try duplicating these various strokes and, even better, see how many of your own you can create.

And now, let’s take a few typical examples of inking and study them. We’ll see if we can tell what’s good about them—and what needs improving ...

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