Comic Ink Studies

Click to enlarge the image.

    Hey pals! I trust you have been doing well. Just wanted to share I little tip I picked up a while back. If you are wanting to practice and improve your line making and inking skills, you can simply use a piece of tracing paper and most types of ink pens. Above, I used one peice of tracing paper to trace and ink over multiple different artists' & inkers' works out of Scott McCloud's book, Making Comics as well as out of numerous comics I own.

    This was very helpful in my understanding of how different qualities of lines were made and which tools that could be made with. The exercise also made the differences in each artist and inker's approach more evident. It was a pretty cool think to try out and I'm certainly going to do more of it. I encourage you to try it out, even if just for the fun of it. Just make sure you have quality tracing paper and the appropriate drawing utensils as to avoid any ink bleeding through the paper onto your comics! (By the way, the date on the studies above is obviously wrong -or else I completed it in the future!)

    I tried to note the original creators of the studies. I'm definitely not trying to take credit for their amazing and inspiring work! If you do try this out, I also encourage you to try it with different styles and subjects. It is really eye opening and great practice! God bless and enjoy the weekend!