Manga Journey: Intro to Inking

January 29, 2010 by r2moo2
Filed under: Manga Journey, how to make a manga

I just tried inking with my manga teacher from my previous lesson, and it is really alot of things to learn again!

Anyway, what I am introducing here is traditional manga inking, and not digital inking where you use digital tools like Manga Studio or Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to know inking from the traditional perspective before going into digital mode.

Seriously, after going through my inking lessons, learning how to create manga comics seems to be no end; but let me share with you my journey so that you are mentally prepared for it.

Manga Journey: Intro to Inking

According to my manga teacher, inking is supposed to be done only at the final stage of your drawing. There should be absolutely no corrections nor mistakes because the changes are irreversible.

In my previous post, “Manga tools and equipment part 1“, I shared about the tools needed for manga.

Right now for inking, we will be needing 3 things which I have described in the previous post..

First, you need a pen holder with a pen nib to ink with.

You will also need a bottle of ink. It’s Chinese caligraphy ink I supposed.

Finally, you need paper quality of 100 gsm, and that’s what people call “manga paper”. However, this paper is expensive, so I just used 80 gsm paper for demostration.

Process of inking

Supposed you already have a final piece of artwork ready to be inked, and you know that you are not going to add in anymore corrections.

First, this pen nib and pen holder is very traditional; it doesn’t have a tube of ink to feed ink into the pen nib.

Rather, we need to consistently dip the pen nib into the ink for awhile for the ink to be refilled.

What happens here? The capiliaries of the nib will be soaked with ink, and when you press the pen nib onto paper, the capiliaries will release the ink on to what you are drawing.

/*Click to enlarge the photo
I wonder you can see the capiliaries here, but at least you can see a giant hole on the pen nib, and a straight capiliary down in the middle. That’s where the ink will be contained.

Why do you need to know this? This means that while inking, you will run out of ink pretty quickly.

If you do not plan or strategize your inking process, your ink will run out half way while inking, and if it happens in the middle of a line, which is not at a cross-section or a joint, it will be a very obvious mistake because the previous line and the latter line will not match.

So there needs to be some practice even with inking.

Also, the ink tends to smudge the pages if we are too forceful, or if the pen nib is spoilt, or the paper quality is too low (lesser than 80 gsm).

/*Click on the photo to enlarge

If you observe the photo, the left side of my drawing has little smudges of ink and is darker than the right side.

Somehow too much ink came out of the pen nib while I was doing some practice, and the smudges occured.

Some tips to practice with inking

When I first got my inking set, my manga teacher have me test every of the pen nibs that I was given.

Why? That’s because:

There is usually a layer of wax to prevent the pen nibs from rusting within the pen nibs. Traditional manga artists generally use a lighter’s flame to melt it, but my teacher said it runs the risk of spoiling the pen nibs; she rather me keep using the pen nibs to remove the layer of wax.
To find a particular pen nib that I would prefer so that I can practice with it, so that my inking will be consistent.

However there is no doubt that I have to use every pen nib that I was given, because the smaller ones will cater to fine details while the bigger ones cater to large areas of mass.

Also, to practice, my manga teacher advised me to get those coloring books of manga comics, such as Naruto or Bleach, carbon copy it to paper, and practise inking.

Later on, when I am more proficient with inking, I will do it on my own artwork.

Final words for this post

Inking itself is an art, because it still requires the appropriate skill to create lines that are consistent, so that our final art piece will look consistent.

It will be a long journey before I can start producing comics, but I guess that makes the journey worthwhile.

That’s all for this post! Stay tuned for more updates on manga journey!

Share and Enjoy: