Inking Process

Here's some pics of my inking process for a piece I did for a gallery show.

 

These are the pencils of the main character, a woman in a steampunk outfit.  Since I was going to place a second character in the black silhouette of her outfit, I concentrated on creating interesting shapes in the outline of her clothes and in the swirls of her hair.

Once I combined the the pencils of the two characters (image missing) I scanned that into Photoshop and quickly threw in the blacks to double-check everything was in the right spot.

After I made some minor corrections to the pencils, I taped the them to a light box and then placed a 11" x 14" sheet of Vellum bristol board on top of that.  I inked the piece using a Hunt School 56 nib and Speedball Super Black.  It took me a couple of hours-I remember watching the last two periods of a NHL game during this part.

Once the linework was dry I scanned that into the computer.  In Photoshop I made some slight corrections, filled the blacks, and added a spot color.  The final image is digital.

After I submitted the digital file for the show I went back and finished the inks by filling the blacks in with a brush and making small corrections with a 005 Micron pen.  This can be a time consuming process so I usually do this after the deadline so I can sell the inks at a later point.  (Note: In the photo the inks look uneven because the camera flash is bouncing off of them.)

I'll post a link to the final image once I hear that my piece has been accepted.
2/22/12 EDIT: Good news!  I was accepted to the show.  Here's a link to the finished piece.
3/2013 EDIT: The catalog of the show is now up on Amazon.