Inking time!
Inking. I love inking, even though I’m not the great at it. I wanted to use my G-pen nibs for one of these, but my art stuff is located along a wall that backs up to my kid’s room so rummaging through stuff at night to find the nib and pen is a no go. So, I used what I could easily grab, which was a bamboo pen, a brush (I forget the size, but it’s white sable), and microns. I can’t print in color, and I couldn’t find my bristol, so I used two sheets of hot press illustration paper I had. It’s a smooth finish, and works great with ink.
The bamboo brush was crazy. I haven’t used one in a couple of years and you can tell. It’s very hard to control the line weight with. I remember that, with practice, you can get it to be mostly consistent, but ugh. What a mess! The brush was better, and is what I prefer to ink with. (though where is my line variation?)
The microns I used were .1 and .3. I slowly built up the lines over multiple passes. I like doing this because, even though it’s a tad tedious, I feel like I have more control over my line weight. Still had a few missteps here, like the hand in the background being too think and oh, hey, I forgot to draw that other hand and wait, is she missing a finger? But overall, I felt that I was far more successful with the microns that I was the bamboo pen or the brush. I may change what I work with!
I immediately notice that I am very consistent with my line weight. I always THINK I’m varying them, but then I finish the piece and go, “oh.” I have a bit better luck varying things when I ink digitally, but even then, I am hesitant to push anything. I think I’m too concerned I might mess up, at which point the drawing is ruined. While I know it would be easier to just make the mistake and shop it out later, it really is a HUGE mental barrier. I don’t know why. IT HAS TO BE PERFECT the first time, or IDK, just shitty? I need to get over it.
I chose to do cross hatching because while I love it, I am not good at it. I wanted to try to push myself outside my comfort zone a bit. I DID cheat a bit, and penciled in the areas I wanted to hatch before I inked, but I think that’s just smart planning. I enjoyed how the cross hatching came out, though, again, I could have pushed it a bit more. I had a hard time figuring out how to use the hatching to show the shape of the fingers. I was finally starting to figure it out by the time I finished.
Fun and interesting inking challenge!
