Inking

Inking is one of my favourite parts of the comic drawing process. Gone is the pressure to compose a page in a readable and aesthetically pleasing manner; gone is the need to wrangle perspective and create realistic characters and settings; gone is the so slow pace.

Now it’s about finding that perfect line – a mix of precision and looseness, the slight exaggeration that brings a face or pose to life without letting things get out of hand. When it’s working it’s a real pleasure, and finished pages emerge from the end of the pen at a pleasing rate. When it’s going wrong, everything looks stiff and out of whack, and you just hope you can fix it, or at least that nobody else notices.

It’s nice now to see something of an end in sight, to know that I’ve climbed the mountain of scripts and thumbnails and pencils. Now I get to ride down the other side, leaving digital ink in my wake, listening to endless podcasts (Ear Hustle, The Adventure Zone, 99% Invisible etc etc etc) and music (Frightened Rabbit, R.E.M, Billie Eilish etc etc etc).

And with ends in sight I make deadlines I might hit. End of August, maybe not. End of September? Possibly. End of October, I certainly hope so.