Elsewhere I posted some words on inking and caught  rgibson saying a few things as well when she posted some comic pages. So I thought I'd slap a visual ref in scraps just to point to people.

1.) Inked with a technical pen. Technical pens were originally made for draftsmen because you get almost no line weight variation out of them. Perfect when you're trying to draw buildings and room layouts and such. Unfortunately one technical pen can run you roughly $20 in this day and age. On the good side though, they're refillable and made of metal. If you keep it clean it will last forever. All four drawings had a technical pen base when I transferred the image via light table.

2.) Pigma pen. They're a good quick and cheap tool that you can get a bit more light weight variation out of. On this one I cheated a little and outlined the character, sort of faking a brush look, but you can probably see the difference.

3.) This was done with a fountain pen with only a little bit of light weight fudging. I like a fountain pen by Rotring called the Rotring Art Pen. It's a good tool if you want to improve your line variation but don't have the courage yet to try a brush.

4.) And this was done with a brush. With a brush you can get hair thin lines and really thick ones, but they are unforgiving if you press too hard. You can get some really beautiful lines out of them though if you practice. I had a fear of brushes for a long time but I'm finally starting to come out of it somewhat. It also takes less time to ink with a brush than it does to fake inking with a brush.

I probably could have made the character look more consistent, but I was rushing this. Blerf.