One of the ways that I learned how to use pen, a nib, was by copying a lot of older
artists just to sort of figure out how to approach and how to make the lines look
the way I wanted them to look.
One of the ones that I came across was this Frankenstein book by Bernie
Wrightson where he illustrated the story.
He's a master beyond master.
These illustrations he's actually doing with a brush, they're like super large.
I mean, like this cover thing is a gigantic image, but he'll go in there
with a brush and some pen and he'd really just render the hell out of everything.
So, you can zoom in, you see like the little indentations on the monster's
face.
On Dr. Frankenstein, just like every bottle, barrel, piece of wood, stone,
everything is rendered differently.
You don't want to ink everything the same way.
This chair and the wood grain on it is completely different than the way he did
the stone.
It's completely different than the way he did this glass beaker.
Completely different than he did the fabric on Frankenstein.
Even the fabric here is different than the fabric on Dr. Frankenstein.
Everything is considered, everything is done differently.
I mean, the way he did the wood over here is different than the way he did the wood
over here because this wood is going into darkness.
So, he sort of played around with the different light sources and inked it
differently.
And just copying stuff like this sort of gives you an idea of how to make the
tools work for you.
I mean, no one's gonna do it as well as this guy and he was taking months and
sometimes years on each illustration.
You sort of get an idea of how to make your hand move to make these marks on a
page.
And it's also just spectacular inking because I mean, like I was saying about
the foreground, background and stuff in distance, by putting the blacks on the
figures in the front, he really pulls them forward and then the background
recedes with the thinner lines.
And the same thing here, by using all these little lines here to create volume
in the front of the panel, it pops it forward even though the back is black, it
still pops it so you can see like the clear separation of depth from the
foreground to the figures in the middle and the background.
Copying this stuff, you won't be as good as this because who could be?
You sort of get an idea of how to use the tools and being more precise and
thoughtful about putting your lines down.
If you want to learn how to ink a page with all the tools and techniques you
need to do it right, I go over that in the course at proko.com/marvel.
I tried to do this one a million times and it just didn't work out.
It's a weird one because like there's so much line work that you almost get lost
but if you squint, you can sort of see every plane.
You can see that this is in the front, you can see that this person is slightly
behind him.
Every book and every
instrument and object back there is done differently.
So, it sort of reminds you that you have to approach everything with a different
feel, different touch.
For feathering, like I said, it's one of those deals where you just have to kind
of practice it a lot and I tend, like I said, to go from a thinner line into the
black.
Sometimes you try to do the feathering obviously around the curvature of the
form.
So, like
Here it's going around the curve of the form here in the tunic, over here it's
going around the cape, over here it's going around the helmet, you know, like
just little slight variations to just keep indicating the roundness of the
form.
And sometimes you do it twice like over here, you're doing it to indicate the
form
Going around and then doing it like a double lighting effect where it's lit
from underneath too with the energy crackling up from the ground.
I do it with a pen.
A lot of people do it with a brush.
It's so many different ways to do it.
If you need to be super precise, you just do it with a ruler where you kind of lift
the edge of the ruler and then just kind of pull the lines into the black.
So, it could be like super precise and straight there as opposed to some of
these that are just freehand.
But it really is one of the most effective ways of showing the roundness
of a form.
You can go in also in cross hatching where you just like add another layer of
lines and that will add to the curvature of the form and it'll add to like some
mass.
So, like this goes into the black here, so it looks like you know, a solid form
as opposed to just a rounded form.
But that's the way I do it.
I mean, there are obviously people that have done it as much and better than I
have ever done it.
So, let's look at this book here.
Klaus Janssen on Frank Miller.
It's like it's a bolder line, it's a brush line.
These guys weren't trying to do like precise pretty line, they're doing like
effective bold lines.
So, that like works right there.
This is John Romita's senior, Gil Kane, and really, it's like just more harshly
done, these lines, but they're very effective.
It's like a looser style, but it still gives you the same basic effect.
Just I do a super precise and technical.
These guys are being more they're loading up a brush and just slapping it on the
page, but it works the same.
Very effective in that respect.
So, for crosshatching, there's a million different ways to do that.
One of the best at it of all time is Barry Windsor Smith.
He's one of the best at everything.
This image has tons of like swirling lines or whatnot but I'm like focusing on
the different ways he did the hatching on the jacket which gives it a little
different it makes it feel like it's a jacket that has like some seams to it.
So, he did like that and then he has the line going across, a little bit of a
shadow under the one over there and it's just all cross-hatched to give it an
effect of like a different fabric than the clothing she's wearing, her t-shirt
or her pants or her boot.
And then sometimes cross hatching is more of a decorative thing to just indicate a
shadow.
On this siege cover by Olivier Coipel and I, the cross hatching went all the way
into the black here.
So, it's like super delicate and then just getting heavier and heavier as it
goes down into the black to form just a different shape.
It's decorative more, it's not really representational art here because we're
just trying it's a montage, it's like a movie poster but it really sort of pulls
it all together when you go slowly into the black here.
As opposed to this one, the cross-hatchings indicate the glow of the
moon here and to indicate the weight on the shoulder underneath his arm here.
And on this stuff over here is just like to indicate like the texture of
Galactus's helmet.
Galactus has been around for a million years, so it's like, you know, a
weathered costume.
And the crosshatching can also be used for like effects too.
Like underneath this whiteout, I did a crosshatching thing to the flare of the
sun, then went in with whiteout on top of it to give it more of a starburst type of
effect.
Here's kind of the same thing where it's Olivia Coypel page from Avengers vs
X-Men.
The crosshatching just goes into black here and using the ruler, made super
straight crosshatching to show like the burst of energy when the hammer hits
. .
And you can make that extra gray tone with it.
But for just using lines, this is sort of the way to do it.
All the stuff on his legs are freehand.
The energy lines that are like between his legs are like all ruled out precisely
so that it doesn't look the same.
It's all a matter of consistently changing every item to make it look
different.
One of the biggest parts of an inker's job is to create an illusion of depth in
the page and this double page spread by Lenilo Yu and I from Secret Invasion,
there were a million characters on the page and this book has a million
characters on it.
So, you can get lost if you just ink everything the same way because
everything starts flattening out looking like a coloring book.
So, you try to give the characters in the foreground a little heavier line work to
make it pop a little more.
It's not that noticeable here but you notice on this figure and Spider-Man like
his leg and whatnot coming right at you,
And on this character over here, we try to make the lines a little bit thicker
and then sort of use that and the blacks that are surrounding the page to give it
that illusion of depth.
So, you know that the blacks are in the front, these guys are sort of in the
middle and then the guys in the back with like the deadline weight are further in
the back.
So, it kind of makes it recede in an illusion even though it's a flat image,
it still gives it the illusion that it's receding a little bit.
You know, even with like I said Spider-Man for example, like the weight
on his foot is heavier and the weight on his knee which is further behind, which
is heavier than the weight on his arm which is further behind and the web which
is even further behind.
With this one, I pretty much started with the guys in the foreground.
So, it's Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and then Venom and then the bigger guys
like the Vision and Stature.
You have to get those locked in, then you go back and work on the second layer of
characters and then the ones in the far background.
This is one of those deals where I got the page early, so I knew that it would
be a lot.
So, I pretty much picked out a couple of characters a day between other pages.
So, because you just try and do it at one time, it leads to madness.
Another like a simpler one just to show like the depth thing is on this Black
Panther page by Larry Stroman.
There's solid blacks in the foreground and there's like no blacks in the
background.
So, just by definition, it pops it forward.
You know, it's like your eyes are drawn to the solid shapes and the black shapes
in the foreground and you notice this up in the background and
I wanted to give it a rainy bit of background but I didn't want it to be too
overwhelming and compete against the Black Panther himself.
So, I graded out, I used a wash type of thing and then I went in with a razor
blade and scratched raindrops into it.
Not too deep to rip the paper but deep enough to make a groove in it like if you
feel this is they're all grooves right here.
And going with some whiteout like the splash of the rain at the bottom and it's
still black but it's not the black of this.
So, when it gets scanned and colored, it doesn't read the same and it gives you
that illusion of depth.
Another Larry Stroman one where use the whiteout and the scratching away to sort
of pop the effects of the lightning bolts and everything.
You know, it's like kind of push it back a little bit and let the lightning bolt
stuff be in front of it.
I filled in the background with black, feathered it in and then I went in with a
toothbrush
The regular old toothbrush and the liquid white and just sprayed from the burst
here outward, so you get like a sparking energy type of thing.
When that dried, I went in with a razor blade and scratched in some, you know,
lines to give it a little bit more energy and then I went in with a whiteout pen
and made all the lines lightning long.
So, it looks like it's like crackling energy in front of the background stuff
back there.
What I did on this case was I got some Frisket film.
Frisket film is a thin plastic thing with adhesive on the background.
You place it over the image.
You cut out the areas you want to protect.
and then you can go in with black or white or whatever and spray it into that
other area and then peel it off and then the stuff underneath is untouched and you
have the effect on top.
Bilisenkevich on this Moon Knight piece went crazy with the spatter thing where
this black ink spatter right here all up and down the legs in Moon Knight here and
then in the back, he put like layers of brisket over to create the levels of
depth in the buildings because if you notice the buildings appear
are almost super black and then it's like levels of gradation going backwards.
So, it's like all basically laying a frisket down, spraying the level behind
it and spraying the level behind that and spraying the level behind that and then
adding all the the moon and a different spray from underneath to illuminate like
lights from behind the building.
So, that's like a master class in it.
But this has like 18 levels of depth.
I mean, it's like depth upon depth.
You can walk into this one.
I suspect that he just drew this figure first, spattered Moon Knight and then
went in with the background and went crazy on it.
Like I said, there's a million different ways to approach doing it.
It's just a matter of how you want to do it.
No matter what style you bring to your approach, you'll want to check out
Marvel's "The Art of Storytelling".
I'll walk you through the inking process as I show you how I approach inking a
page of Black Panther drawn by Ryan Benjamin.
Go check it out at proko.com/marvel.