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My big challenge in trying to draw clean lines has been finding a way to get the teensy-tiny fine-line details I need yet produce the variable-width outline that features in all the comics I adore (such as this Spirou example<\/a> — please ignore the casual racism that seems to be a feature of Begian comics; what I like is the artwork).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The challenge is that I started cartooning very young, according to what I saw, so I’ve always drawn “at size”, where the received wisdom is that for commercial art you’re supposed to draw at 150% then scale it down. But I can’t do that now because all my sense of proportion and feeling is based on drawing at size.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I’ve tried every kind of marker, nib, and brush, trying to get the right look and feel, and this morning I finally stumbled upon a solution I love, using things I already had in my pen-roll (which I also made — here’s a bunch of sewing instructions<\/a> for these).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n First I “under-draw” with a mechanical pencil filled with non-reproduction blue leads.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then I use a Platinum Carbon Desk Pen<\/a> filled with Platinum Carbon Ink<\/a> — a great combination, because the Carbon Pen is designed to never clog, despite the Carbon Ink being waterproof (which matters later when I colour my drawings with watercolour washes).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Carbon Pen gives me a consistently strong fine line. Unlike all the felt-tip pens I’ve used through the years, its nib doesn’t smush no matter how hard I press. Funny, too, that this pen is cheap as chips, unlike all those expensive technical pens I’ve kept trying and hating.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There are only two problems with the Carbon Pen: 1) It doesn’t flex at all. This is good when I’m doing my fine detail work, but it means that my outlines look thin and weak. 2) It’s too long!<\/em> Out of the box, it’s like one of those pens they have at bank counters on a chain with the vast cigarette-holder end. So I sawed mine off.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Carbon Pen is in the middle here:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n What I would normally do next is go back over the outside lines with my regular writing pen (the very pocketable Kaweco Lilliput<\/a> with a better nib from a Tombow pen<\/a> in it). This gives the characters more weight and makes them pop out from the background (on the rare occasion that I actually draw a background).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The problem with this, though, is that the line is — well, in Zen they talk about “first thoughts”, those fresh insights we have that we then quickly cover over with our socialised, conditioned, more acceptable responses. It’s like that with lines: the first line you draw has life and flow and intention to it; the second is tracing<\/em>. It’s wiggly, it’s hesitant, and — horrors! — it can deviate from the first line, creating little gaps between them, as you can see in this drawing:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The two other pens above are ones I bought recently from Fountain Pen Revolution<\/a>, a manufacturer in India. The Dilli is on the top, and with my order they sent me the Serwex (on the bottom) for free!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I’d read about the Dilli on another cartoonist’s blog<\/a>, but its flex nib was too heavy for fine details (like eyes), so I put it aside, using it just to hand-written letters (because it gives cursive writing a lovely Spencerian thick-and-thin character). The Serwex, though — the free<\/em> one! — proved to be my favourite pen for lettering comics.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n (I also have a medium Lamy Vista<\/a> for bold letters and a broad Lamy Nexx<\/a> for really big letters, as well as a brush pen filled with Carbon ink for doing large, wiggly features like panel borders.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n What occurred to me this morning was to just do the fine details with the Carbon pen but leave the outlines alone, then do them with the Dilli’s flex nib.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n [*Cue Hallelujah Chorus<\/em>*]<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If you look again at the first drawing, you can see (I think) how much cleaner and clearer the outlines are. I’ve been under-drawing anyway since my passion for cartooning has rekindled this past year (and gosh, does under-drawing improve the integrity of a figure), so with that guideline in place, it really doesn’t matter at what point I do the outlines.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n So there you have it. If you persisted through all this, you’re either a drawing implement geek like me, or else a very patient person. Thank you!<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My big challenge in trying to draw clean lines has been finding a way to get the teensy-tiny fine-line details I need yet produce the variable-width outline that features in all the comics I adore (such as this Spirou example — please ignore the casual racism that seems to be a feature of Begian comics; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-content\/uploads\/posts\/1398\/the-finest-lines12.jpg.webp\")
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