Inking I Part 1: Tools
These are the tools and supplies I’m using to ink Spindrift.
For backgrounds, (especially straight lines) or really small parts of images, I use refillable manga pens by Tachikawa, similar to fountain pens. The nibs are not interchangeable and the ink is supplied by cartridges that you can replace as they empty. They have a tendency to dry out fairly quickly, but you can usually restart the ink by dipping the nib into water and blotting it on a paper towel. Be sure to test it on a piece of scrap paper before putting the pen down on your page!
The Tachikawa pens are nice, and less messy than dip pens, but they’re not really responsive to pressure. You can get some line width variation by pressing down on the pen, but if you’re like me and want really big variation on human figures and organic shapes, they’re not very useful. But for backgrounds with lots of straight lines and little variation, they’re great.
Next are the dip pens, also by Tachikawa. I’m using two different sizes of nib: a maru nib, which is very small and thin, and a T-600 Chrome nib, which is much larger. The maru nib will give a little bit of variation, much like the manga pens above, but the line is too small and thin for me to use for larger elements of the picture, so I mostly use it for small backgrounds with organic shapes. The T-600 Chrome nib is wonderfully responsive to pressure, giving me lots of variation from thick to thin, so I use it for most of the work. I find it works better for me than the G nib, which is what a lot of manga artists use for the same sort of work.
The T-600 Chrome nib is on the left, and the maru nib is on the right. The weird clear things are caps for the pens, which I’m using to stop the pens from rolling away. 
Next to them is the ink I’m using: a Japanese ink by Pilot made specifically for drawing. You can’t get it in the United States, and this is where having friends who live in Japan comes in really handy. It’s fairly cheap, too: roughly $5-6 for the bottle, I think.
And for the big black areas and panel borders I use the Tombow Dual Brush-Pen in black. This pen has a regular rounded marker tip on one end and a flexible brush-shaped marker tip on the other. It’s not good for fine, detailed work unless you’ve got better control than I do, but it’s excellent for filling in large areas and drawing lines against a straightedge. Some people use Sharpies or other markers, but I like the way this one feels the best. I use the brush tip for filling in black areas and the marker tip for drawing panel borders.
Right now I’m using some sort of specialized manga paper whose brand name I’ve forgotten. You can get it with blue lines pre-marked on it or blank and I’m using blank since the size of the comic pages I’m producing bears no resemblance to the size of standard manga pages in Japan. I’m not using a standard drawing table right now because I watch TV shows and movies on my computer while inking and my drawing table is on the other side of the room. With this big drawing board, I can prop it between my lap and the computer desk and it sits at just about the perfect angle to ink. The clip to the side provides a perfect way to keep my paper towel nearby for blotting and cleaning pen tips.
I’ve got the page taped down right now for drawing the panel borders, because it’s next to impossible to draw a line the length of a page against a straightedge without the paper getting a mind of its own and twisting away from you. After the borders are in, I remove the tape because I want to be able to turn the paper to whatever angle is best for each line I’m working on.
And now for the straightedge. I use two, but there’s only a picture of one. This is OK, because the actual type of ruler/straightedge you use is not important: what’s important is that one side is angled. See the picture below for a head-on view of my 18″ ruler for panel borders.
See how the top is sort of a truncated pyramid shape? When you use this ruler to ink straight lines, you want to use it upside down. Ink is wet. Ink has a mind of its own. If you use a straightedge that is flat against the paper, ink usually seeps under the edge and you end up smearing it when you move the straightedge. I have an example of that later, where I forgot and placed a ruler right-side-up for a couple of lines.
If you don’t have a ruler or straightedge that is shaped like that, you can fake it by taping a few pennies to one side of a flat ruler. They’ll lift it far enough off the paper that the ink won’t smear.
What you need to be careful of when inking against a straightedge is that ink will probably get onto the ruler or straightedge and then get onto your page, your, hands and/or your clothes, so be careful not to tilt it against the paper, and wipe it off with a paper towel every time you notice a bit of ink getting on it. If you ignore it, it can drip off and make big ugly splats on your page.
On to the next part!
Inking I: Introduction
Part 1: Tools
Part 2: Starting Out
Part 3: Details
Part 4: Scanning
