14 Jan 2017

A wonderful article from Dan Panosian’s Facebook wall yesterday Friday January 13 on the various essential aspects of inking. He’s a master of the art form and, as a contributor since the Inkwell Awards launched in 2008, has even graciously designed our Inkwell Awards logo!  We print the article here with Dan’s permission. Bob

There’s been a lot of discussion about inking lately among professionals. The vast majority of my early career was spent inking. Lots of inking. Inking, for those that aren’t familiar with the term is the black line work aspect of the art before it’s colored. Sometimes Inkers are called Tracers. It makes sense, in many cases the pencils they’re inking are so finished looking that they may not really require inking. But in some cases, an Inker is adding finesse to the drawing. Fixing little mistakes or adding texture. The role of the Inker varies from project to project. And like all professions, some are better at it than others. But there are some fundamentals that are essential to comic book inking.

Inking and line art drawing is basically using lines and in some cases, tones, to replicate Light and Shadow for 2D purposes. Understanding that alone is the perhaps the most important aspect of both drawing and especially inking. Using lines to visually inform the viewer of how light is affecting an object. Or, how it isn’t – in the case of shadows. Simple, right? You would be surprised how often that sort of thinking is abandoned, particularly in the comic book art-form. Even with professionals.
At times, artists forget that very important concept for the sake of artistic expression and call it Style. Style is key in the art world. It separates one talent from another. A well crafted style of drawing or inking becomes, in a sense, much like a signature. It’s what separates us and makes our artistic expression unique. It’s why you like one artist and not another. A style either appeals to you or it doesn’t. Regardless of whether or not a style appeals to you – it’s key that the style adheres to the same rules of nature and what we relate to everyday when we open our eyes. The Principles of Light and Shadow.

So a style can be fancy or it can be bare. It can flourish and it can even occasionally break rules. But unless, you’ve first mastered drawing, like say – Picasso, breaking the rules for the sake of style is a big mistake. It’s not “telling the story” with ink. Drawings are the tools of visual storytellers. If your drawings convey your story – you’re a successful storyteller no matter what the style. But if your style interferes with the story flow- you’re failing. An illustrator can be extremely detailed or extremely bare-bones in their approach but the objective should always be story. That goes for inking as well. If the inking is off, that can affect the reader’s attention. Their eyes try to correct or make sense of what they’re seeing. That is a determent to story and unless it’s intentional -should be avoided.

To demonstrate the most simple and most powerful aspects of inking I’ve used this beautiful Winnie the Pooh coloring book illustration as an example. Years ago, Dick Giordano gave me the most important inking advice of my career. He said to always imagine a light bulb at some point/place in the drawing. If the light shines from the top of the page that means every object with a top and bottom line [ like a cylinder ] is affected. The top line is light and naturally the bottom line is heavier. Suddenly, the object [ cylinder ] has the illusion of real solidity and weight. If both lines are the same line weight, it’s harder to demonstrate weight. It’s a simple concept.
Of course there are examples of single line weight illustration. But if an inker is employing varying line weights and the Principle of Light and Shadow is messed with – things can be confusing. It won’t make as much visual sense. If an inker just likes using a bouncing line weight because it looks pretty – it will lack sophistication. Comic books and sophistication? It’s possible!
So in the example below – note that even the tops and bottoms of feathers employ the same well executed line weights. But let’s remember it’s for a coloring book. There’s nothing wrong with that. But for a comic book, that sort of flourish misinforms the viewer. Style overrides substance. Style is important but it should never distract from story.

Another quick note. Many inkers freeze up on faces. Suddenly they pay more attention and forget that the bottom of a nose has weight – not quite as much as a chin – but it extends outward and creates a shadow. And thus- a heavier line is required to properly illustrate that. The same with the eyebrows. They extend over the the eyes. Our eye lashes have a natural “black” line to them. So the top of the eye should be pronounced. It will make the eyes pop more. Just like they do on our faces in real life. Hair has shadows too. It clumps, it waves. The top of the hair should be light and the bottom should be heavier – just like other objects.
For that matter, notice the trim lines on the “egg” or whatever that object is that the owl is carrying. Some lines are simply there to illustrate a change in color. Similar to the lines encircling Owl’s eyes. They don’t have weight. The should simply denote a change in color – not depth.
Anyway, stuff to think about.

08 Jan 2017

WHAT IS IT?
The Inkwell Awards invites you to the seventh annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge. Our Hall of Fame Award is named after Joe and, with his approval and support, we have taken a couple of his pencil donations intended for our fundraising, originally rendered on blank variant cover comics, and blown them up and converted them to bluelines for inking. We have chosen ink artists who are A) part of our organization, B) Inkwell award recipients, or C) notable for their career inkwork ranging from the veteran embellishers of the silver-age through to the respected delineators of today, but any inker can take part, including novices. Since last year some of you who missed previous Challenges asked me to be added to the list and you are included here. For fundraising and educational purposes, we’d like to know if you would be willing to voluntarily participate in inking one or both of these pieces. We will take the final images and post them on our Comic Art Fans gallery in comparison to Joe’s initial pencil art in order to showcase to the public the contributions of various ink artists and what they bring to the table. Secondly, these pieces would be auctioned off to raise funds for our vital operational needs and philanthropic programs like the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund to the students of the Joe Kubert School and our COMPliments Program which allows HoF inkers who are singled out from receiving collections of their work from publishers to receive them through us and not have to purchase them, as well as trophies, flying in award recipients to the annual ceremony, etc. Last year’s successful program (not counting the Jim Lee spin-off) brought in over $3000 on our eBay auctions and this year we anticipate an even better outcome. You can see previous samples of donations from our first five years at our Comic Art Fans gallery (top left labeled links).

All proceeds raised go 100% strictly to the non-profit and the only members paid for their services are legal, accounting and the spokesmodel as a productivity incentive.
WHAT TO DO?

If you are interested in contributing please email BOTH myself <dmralmond@gmail.com> and senior contributor Tom Schloendorn <tom_schloendorna4@comcast.net to confirm that you have the tools/capabilities to print up a hi-res blueline file on 11X17 2-ply Strathmore vellum board to ship back to me and we will promptly email you the hi-res file of either one or both images– please specify what you want…files will be emailed out within 24 hours of requests in most cases (THE SAMPLES HERE ARE LO-RES SIMPLY FOR REFERENCE)…or if you don’t and are an established, published professional and you’d like us to ship either or both pages of bluelined boards to you, please forward your shipping address to us in your reply. If you cannot participate, no need to reply, we totally understand about your busy schedules and lives making it a challenge (plus, if we do this again, we’d probably touch base with you again). But should you know of another notable inker willing to participate please pass on their email address so we can invite them….however, we have the right to not include a request and please be aware that no work is guaranteed to be included in our subsequent book collection. But to be eligible for the book you MUST send us a 300dpi hi-res scan at full size upon completion and before shipping. We will be following-up with friendly reminders prior to the deadline. The deadline is Saturday, March 25, 2016 (11 weeks). THE ART MUST BE SHIPPED AND RECEIVED BY Mark Sinnott at:

Mark Sinnott

44 Spaulding Lane

Saugerties, NY 12477

***Joe Sinnott will sign every page. If you leave his blueline signature blank then he will sign it there (but it won’t be in the scan if used in the book). If you ink in his sig, he will sign the page outside the borders or wherever there is a good spot. Mark will subsequently ship them to me to make out item descriptions. Auctions will run subsequent to that in 2-4 waves in April. (The less-inclusive Neal Adams Spotlight Challenge art will run in March.)

SPECIFIC INKING NOTES: You can ink it ‘as is’ or reinterpret it, bringing something extra to the table….this year we will have a Dr. Strange and a Wonder Woman, both somewhat loose, with no real tightly-pencilled option due to Joe’s tight schedule (very often what happens in an assignment). You are encouraged to ink the logos to motivate more auction bids but you don’t have to.

Please LMK if you have any questions.

SUMMARY:

* reply to myself and Tom if interested and request the hi-res blue line file(s) to be emailed or (to vets) the blueline print up(s) to be mailed with your shipping address.

* ship the art back upon completion to the Mark Sinnott address above. After that you can post it online publicly as long as you plug that it’s for the 7th JOE SINNOTT INKING CHALLENGE for the INKWELL AWARDS (https://inkwellawards.com) to promote and educate about the art form of inking and to raise funds for their non-profit organization and their annual Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund to the Kubert School.
* we will be happy to mail you tax-exempt receipts upon request for your contribution.

* we will contact you later if we plan to include you in the book collection for the previous year’s contributions and get your bio/photo/comment information.

Thanks much for your time, effort, and support, especially those who have been involved in this program for several years (you know who you folks are;-)).

Sincerely,

Bob Almond

1/7/2017

This photo and below: submissions from last year’s 6th annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge with Deadpool and Spider-Gwen.