Weapon of Choice
I haven't done a post on the technical end of comic book creation in awhile, so here we go.
My tool of choice to ink with is a Hunt Crowquill #102 Dip Pen. It's nothing fancy, and can be acquired from the Dick Blick Big Catalouge in the Inking section, or from most Hobby Lobbies in the Caligraphy section. It's also simple to use. Hold pen like you would any other pen. Dip in ink. Draw.
The Joy of the Crowquill is the amount of precision and control that the pen provides. You wanna draw eety beety lines? A fresh Crowquill can do that. And you only need one, instead of a veritable arsenal of different sizes of fairly expencive brushes. With a Crowquill, it's all about the pressure you exert. Want a really thin line? Use a light touch. Want a fat, yet controlled line? Put a little extra pressure on it, and Bingo, you've got a thicker line. A Comic Pro I talked to back in my early days said I should ink with a brush instead of a pen, because you can't get a variety of Line Values with a pen. Bullshit. You just gotta know how to use the pen right.
And the cool thing about the Crowquill is that even though the pen has a very limited life as a precision instrument (I can usually ink about two pages with a pen before the lines start getting unintentionally thicker), you can still use it after it's past its prime. I use pens that are just starting to lose their precision to draw pages that don't require a lot of control (like, say, a Walt and Sped page) or to draw a page where a thicker line is warranted (like, say, a page where someone's getting ripped to shreds and blood is flying everywhere). When a pen has really gone to crap, I can still use it to ink pages where I am using my "Ugly Style", such as a Broken Tea Cup story, or this new story that appears in Drifter's Rhapsody. For a Broken Tea Cup story, I want the thing to look chaotic and uncontrolled and messy, so I typically use a pen that's really worn out.
When a pen has gotten to the point where it's almost completely useless, that's when I relegate it to Lettering Duty. That's right, the same pens that I use to ink virtually everything else are the same pens that I use to Letter the book as well. A worn out pen insures that the lettering will be nice and dark, and therefore will (in theory) be legible even after the pages have been reduced, scanned, and printed.
And, really, a Crowquill is what I use to ink just about everything. I only use a brush to fill in large areas of black (I use a bruch a lot in my Cosmic Fool stories) or when I want a very loose, uncontrolled, fat look (aka my Bojangles stories). If you would like to see what kind of mayhem I can unleash with a single dip pen, then I invite you to swing by www.torcpress.com/comicshop.html and score a book or two. Hey! I got a little hype in there too.
My tool of choice to ink with is a Hunt Crowquill #102 Dip Pen. It's nothing fancy, and can be acquired from the Dick Blick Big Catalouge in the Inking section, or from most Hobby Lobbies in the Caligraphy section. It's also simple to use. Hold pen like you would any other pen. Dip in ink. Draw.
The Joy of the Crowquill is the amount of precision and control that the pen provides. You wanna draw eety beety lines? A fresh Crowquill can do that. And you only need one, instead of a veritable arsenal of different sizes of fairly expencive brushes. With a Crowquill, it's all about the pressure you exert. Want a really thin line? Use a light touch. Want a fat, yet controlled line? Put a little extra pressure on it, and Bingo, you've got a thicker line. A Comic Pro I talked to back in my early days said I should ink with a brush instead of a pen, because you can't get a variety of Line Values with a pen. Bullshit. You just gotta know how to use the pen right.
And the cool thing about the Crowquill is that even though the pen has a very limited life as a precision instrument (I can usually ink about two pages with a pen before the lines start getting unintentionally thicker), you can still use it after it's past its prime. I use pens that are just starting to lose their precision to draw pages that don't require a lot of control (like, say, a Walt and Sped page) or to draw a page where a thicker line is warranted (like, say, a page where someone's getting ripped to shreds and blood is flying everywhere). When a pen has really gone to crap, I can still use it to ink pages where I am using my "Ugly Style", such as a Broken Tea Cup story, or this new story that appears in Drifter's Rhapsody. For a Broken Tea Cup story, I want the thing to look chaotic and uncontrolled and messy, so I typically use a pen that's really worn out.
When a pen has gotten to the point where it's almost completely useless, that's when I relegate it to Lettering Duty. That's right, the same pens that I use to ink virtually everything else are the same pens that I use to Letter the book as well. A worn out pen insures that the lettering will be nice and dark, and therefore will (in theory) be legible even after the pages have been reduced, scanned, and printed.
And, really, a Crowquill is what I use to ink just about everything. I only use a brush to fill in large areas of black (I use a bruch a lot in my Cosmic Fool stories) or when I want a very loose, uncontrolled, fat look (aka my Bojangles stories). If you would like to see what kind of mayhem I can unleash with a single dip pen, then I invite you to swing by www.torcpress.com/comicshop.html and score a book or two. Hey! I got a little hype in there too.
1 Comments:
And here I thought you were going to get Christopher Walken to dance to a Fatboy Slim video.
Post a Comment
<< Home