So, I've been pretty disgusted with my inking as of late, and have seen how absolutely WONDERFUL a lot of people online are with using a Tablet to ink their artwork directly into Photoshop. I bought a fairly-kinda-sorta-decent tablet some years ago, and used it MAYBE twice before putting it down out of absolute frustration.
A few weeks ago, I dusted it off and tried to honestly give it a go. I'm not at all pleased with the results, and I remember why I stopped using tablets in the first place. It feels utterly strange and funky to me, and takes approximately 8 years to get anything done. I figured instead of have this picture rot inside my hard drive forever, I would share with you.
I would really like to improve the inking quality of my work, and know that the only way to get my lines looking the way I want is to get good with inking using a Tablet. Many folks online are utterly AMAZING with these things, and I feel very ape-like and clumsy using one. Hopefully, in time, I will be a goddamn adult and actually practice this manner of art. In the immediate future, though, I think I'll keep trudging along with my crappy V-5 and V-7 pens. I still use AOL for my email, so, as you might imagine, I fear change.
So, here is the pencil sketch I scanned into my computer. The rest of the work on this picture was done using my Tablet and massive sausage fingers.
While I don't think this is TOO terrible for a first real attempt, I still think the lines look shaky and weak. I didn't want to mess up, so I zoomed in SUPER close as I inked each little spot, trying to make it look okay. Zoomed up close, you'll notice a lot of details that just don't stand out at all when you view the image at normal size. I'll have to try and find a happy medium as I experiment with this stuff! I was actually going to use this picture for a Poster for a Podcast episode, but I just don't like how brittle the lines look. I might just ink the original version the old fashioned way, color that in, and use it as a Poster sometime down the road.
