I've been sharing a lot of cartooning tips and tricks in my posts here on Steemit; I try to offer helpful techniques for new artists or even for veteran artists who are just curious to see other artists' processes. I like to share all the things my professors taught me at art school so you don't have to spend an arm and a leg going to one.
I always loved being in a school setting and for the chance to gain new knowledge every day so after graduating from college I made a promise to myself that I would never stop learning. So for this post, I'll be sharing something that I learned post art school. This is a method used by my man, Mike Mignola.
Inking Technique á La Mignola
I've mentioned in this post about "spotting blacks" in comic, where you use areas of black ink to guide focus, establish mood, and create depth.
Now in the past, my comic process goes: pencil, lineart, then fill in the black spaces. Mike Mignola proposes that when you go to ink your pencils instead of doing all the details, first fill in the black spots first. Then go in with the detail.
I was a little hesitant to try this at first but after implementing this strategy, I'm sold. It makes establishing a light source super easy and helps to carve out the image from the page. If your style calls for the use of heavy blacks in your comic or artwork I recommend inking your page this way. The way I do this digitally is I use the lasso tool in Photoshop to select all the areas I want to color and I use the fill tool to fill it in with black. A bonus to this technique is that once you fill in all the blacks, your page feels halfway done!
You can read it from the man himself here.
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That's all for now
Thanks for sticking till the end!
My ending question for you is: What's the first thing you ink or paint after you've finished the sketch?
If you want to learn more about this comic/missed my previous posts, you can read them all here:
Update 1
Update 2
Update 3
Update 4
Update 5
Update 6
If you'd like to keep up with more of my work you can check me out at the following:
Instagram: @la.fumettista
Tumblr: http://la-fumettista.tumblr.com/tagged/art
Twitter: @TheresaChiechi
Website: https://www.theresachiechi.com/