Thursday, October 2, 2008

Rube Goldberg Used a 290


A student of mine was recently asking how to use a ruling pen, along with other questions about various time honored tools of the trade, and I realized how little material there is out there about these tools and their uses, save a couple books on inking like Steve Rude and Gary Martin's (which has some decent pointers in it) and the stalwart, if limited, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (which, if I recall correctly, just has a handful of pages on inking and doesn't focus much on the actual tools). Reminded of that dearth of information, I wanted to be sure to point to comicrazy's post of Lesson 3 from the Famous Artists Cartoon Course: Inking the Head and Figure. It's fairly basic, but packed with useful bits. Featuring art from some of the best the business has ever known doesn't hurt either.

2 comments:

Marian said...

Cool. Thanks for posting! I've been drawing so much I kinda forgot about inking. Have you looked at Jessica Abel and Matt Madden's book yet? I haven't really, but supposedly there is info about the technical stuff...

Anonymous said...

I do remember Abel had some info about the technical aspects of inking in her manifesto about self-publishing. And Marvel's "How to" touched on it as well, but more as an excuse to illustrate dip pens.

Oddly enough I was recently thinking how much things have changed. When I started they still used Zipatone (effectively stickers) that you could use for instant shading. When I heard they were no longer going to be carried locally I stocked up like it was armageddon.

*sigh*