Inking: Black on Black
Working with pen and ink, you often run into the issue of what to do when you have a black element on top of another black element, such as when there is a black figure ...
Pen and Ink
Inking Tool: the Nail
It just struck me the other day that there is an essential tool that I use when drawing in pen-and-ink that I have never read any writer discuss. Now, I don’t ink with a nail ...
Brause nibs – a comparison
When I first got into pen-and-ink, I had only Hunt and Gillott nibs available to me. I enjoyed both brands and had fun experimenting with them, but over the years I developed a taste for ...
Four Ink Favorites
A comparison of my four favorite black drawing inks.
Ink Test
When I write about inks, I tend to focus on their blackness, consistency, and flow. Of course, there is a more fundamental concern: will the ink work on the paper that you want to use? ...
Deleter 4 Ink
I’ve heard about the Deleter inks for a long time, but had never tried any of them. This is partly because I got into pen-and-ink before the boom in interest in manga in the U.S. ...
inking issues: at the border
When using a nib, it is very common to release pressure as you near a border, whether that be a panel border (as shown below) or the contour of a shape. You do this because ...
Tachikawa Jet Black ink
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m always on the quest for the perfect black ink. So I bought a few inks from JetPens along with some other things I needed. And– BAM– I found an incredible ...
Inking Advice
Recently, I’ve been going through the old Famous Artists Course handbooks. If you don’t know, this was an art course first devised in 1948 and it involved teachings by artists like Norman Rockwell, Austin Briggs, ...
Speedball Super Black vs. Holbein Super Opaque Black
I’m always on a quest for the perfect ink. A long time ago, Jimmie Robinson told a group of us who were at a meeting of Bay Area comics creators that he used Speedball Super ...