"Well, anyone can trace. Mostly badly. An inker has to interpert the gray shades of pencil into a black and white line. This is no way as easy as it sounds. A bad inker can mutiliate the best pencils. To me a great inker will add dimension and tones to the work, keep the expressions that the penciller has worked SO hard to get and not take away from the pencillers intention in emotion or shadow.

There are pencillers who require inkers who will draw into their work. Those pencillers might do loose or tight layouts and the inker is required to be a finisher as well, doing a lot of the spotting of black and drawing. The inkers style largely becomes the style of the book in that case.

I'm the kind of penciller who puts down EVERY line. I pencil tight. My hope is always that the inker will understand exactly what I meant and lay the ink down where I designed for it to go. Their own style will determine how the line looks, but my desire is to find an inker who will put in the detail that I like."

-Jan

Mr. Corroney,

I searched Amazon.com but to no avail there isn't an "Art of Joe Corroney" book. A pity. When it's published, I'll be your first buyer.

Thanks for your tips on Dorman and Struzan. I have used your advice to study other artists a lot in my life. My favorites are Loomis, Frazetta, and Schultz. Another favorite was Kirby. Attached is a recreation of his timeless Avengers # 4 cover that I did as a Kirby homage. I'm inking this piece as I'm writing this.
I have studied inking with Ray Kryssing and the excellent Bob McLeod. Here's more new samples of my work. It's my inks over pro Paul Ryan. It's not Star Wars, but I'd thought you'd enjoy it. My other mentor, the great Gene Colan, also enjoyed the piece. My scanner didn't do the sky justice in the Fantastic Four piece. I did some professional inking for AC just recently on a book titled "Fighting Yank". By the way, thanks for your comments on penciling and digital painting without inking.
Thanks again for your tips. I look forward to seeing more of your work in Sketch magazine. Your work is dazzling. I hope you enjoy continued success.

Very Best Regards,
Michael Greczek

"Something to think about, and this should not be percieved as negative criticism, just a discussion of technique, your focus with your inks is on outline and the expression of form through outline and pools of black, there's no doubt that this is a successful formula for inking and gives you something solid to work with when you paint the piece, but there are other solutions to expressing form with ink lines.

As an experiment, try inking without outlines, using only black and shading techniques to express form. Or no black, just various crosshatching, spatter or textures. Developing a couple of crosshatch techniques that work for you is a good weapon to have in your arsenal. The tool you pick will dictate the organic or technical feeling the crosshatching evokes. I use a combination of tech pens, Hunts 108s, even brushes for various crosshatching looks and when it comes to other textures I add sharpees, fingerprints, toothbrushes and anything else I can find.

I'm not suggesting you drastically alter your approach, but occasionally I see a place in your ink finishes where it would be useful for you to have a few more techniques on hand to pick from. You might want to find a copy of 'Arthur Guptills Rendering in Pen and Ink', my inking bible for years. These guys were the real masters of pen and ink!

-Tom