These days, penciled comic book page do not necessarily need to be inked -- especially if the artist is a tight penciller. Advances in technology (printing and graphic software) have made this possible even though a lot of publishers and creators still prefer the crisp and polished look of an inked page. There are times however, when it is desirable to preserve the original pencils for one reason or the other -- for example, if you're planning to sell it later. This can be done in a number of ways. The inker can use a program to digitally ink the piece (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator) or use tracing paper to enable him to ink over it, keeping the original untouched. I'm not particularly adept at using technology for something like inking (call me old-fashioned). I like the feel of a brush in my hand and seeing the ink flow over paper. Tracing paper is a bit cumbersome to use especially if you're going to black-out a lot of areas because it will inevitably warp. A better alternative is to scan the artwork, print it on good stock paper, and then ink over that. And that's what we're going to do. For this exercise, I did a quick sketch of a page (2-3 hours) using photos taken by Tricia Gosingtian and China Capay for a photoshoot they did with Alodia Gosiengfiao and Jin Joson. I scanned the page at 600 dpi because I wanted to catch more details from the artwork. It's also a way of compensating because I used short bond copy paper (the standard is 11x17 in.) so the drawing is comparatively smaller. After the scan, I cleaned it up in Photoshop and reduced it to 300 dpi. One advantage of this technique is that you end up with more details and better line quality which is important if you're going to print the artwork and ink over that. I have a high-res version uploaded at DeviantART. Click here. We're now going to convert the line work to blue. Actually, it doesn't really have to be blue. It can be green, red, as long as it's all in one color so we can easily remove it after inking. First step is to make sure you're working in RGB mode. Click on image>mode. Click on 'RGB Color'. To convert your linework to blue click on image > adjustments > hue/saturation...(shorcut key: ctrl+U). A window should be opening. Click 'colorize' (bottom right of the box). I used the following settings: Hue: 180, Saturation: 100, Lightness: 50.

It takes a bit of trial and error, actually. What we’re actually going for here is a very light blue. Light enough that the scanner is not going to pick up a whole lot but not so light that you won’t be able to see it.

You'll need to see it after all if you're going to ink it. Ideally you should be using a light box but it's not absolutely necessary. If you don’t have one just keep the lines a bit darker so you can at least see what you’re doing. You should have something like this. After getting a shade of blue that you’re comfortable with, print it out using board paper (Ideally a 90 gsm stock, smooth...shaken not stirred). I used to draw on Bristol board but the quality of the ones available locally has been inconsistent so I switched to the specialty paper they usually use for printing calling cards and the like. Boards of about 90 gsm is thin enough to run on a desktop printer without causing much jamming. Board paper of these types are excellent for inking (especially brush inking) because of its smooth surface. Print on normal mode so you can see as much of the lines possible. Avoid econofast because it will cause some of your lines to blur giving you a much harder time to ink the piece. Now we begin the actual inking.I’m not going to discuss the particular method I used for inking this piece (we’ll save that for another day). Very briefly however, I used my Pentel Penbrush dipped in chinese ink and UNIpin technical pens (0.1 and 0.5). Inking the whole piece took me 2 hours. After letting the ink dry (but of course), scan the artwork at 600 dpi in RGB mode. To get rid of the blue lines, we once again go to image>adjustments>hue/saturation... (shorcut key: ctrl+U), hit ctrl+4 which will give you CYAN, and drag Lightness to +100 (don't click OK yet!). Now, hit ctrl+5, drag Lightness to +100, and click OK. This should get rid of all the blue lines but you will probably have a bit of smudge or some stray lines here and there. Convert all your lines to gray (ctrl+shift+U) and use auto-levels (ctrl+shift+L). From here on then the eraser and the dodge tool is going to be your best friend. When using dodge set your exposure to 50% with a slightly feathered brush. Again it's a matter of trial and error until you find what works best for you. The final product will look, more or less, like this. Click here for the high-res version.