Tutorial Part 2: Ink

Original: 10x6.5
Medium: Ink
Copyright Notice: Illustration 2015 by Bob Giadrosich/Xiangbala Studio. All Rights Reserved.

Tutorial Part 1: Finished Pencil

Here is the inked version of my tutorial for the "image without a name."

As far as tools are concerned, I'm more of a reductionist in approach, in that I don't employ a lot of hardware to get the job done. Generally, I use whatever is at hand, in this case, an old brush that I had laying around (an Indeutsch 7561R-2/0, made in India) and a bottle of Higgins Black Magic Ink. All the line work was done with that brush, and then I switched to an old, battered #2 brush (whose ability to keep a point has long since gone away) to fill in the black areas. I used a hawk nib (crow quill) for the cross-hatching in the "wings" on either side of her head. After scanning the piece in, I cleaned it up in photoshop.

Knowing that I would add color, I purposely left out textural detail and shading, as I felt that these could best be expressed through the color. One thing I want to avoid is for the piece to look like a "colored ink drawing," in that, I want each medium to contribute to the overall feel and look of the finished image. If this were to be a finished ink drawing, I would have gone into much greater detail with the ink.

At this point, the image is still fairly simple, even plain, by some standards. However, that will change when I start to lay in the underpainting, which will be the subject of Stage 3. As always, thanks for looking!