I’ve found that how my art looks to me can change quite a bit depending on inking method. Every so often I do a series of comparisons- this one was inspired by seeing one of those art videos where someone says pencils can be cleaned up and used as inks.

Pencils used to substitute for inks. This always sounds so appealing but I tend not to like the results… my pencils are incredibly messy. Maybe this would be a better look for a character/style that are more detailed- I find that my eyes go right to any messy or wonky lines. The pencil “inks” are also less efficient for coloring because they’re rough.

This is digital lineart with the stabilization turned all the way off. This gives me more control over my lines and keeps the computer from distorting what I drew, but results in a bit of visible jitter. I’m not sure how much to dislike the jitter. On one hand, it kind of looks like the line jitter in Peanuts, which (although it gives the strip an endearing quality and a characteristic look) was also not intentional, and I think anything reminiscient of Peanuts is probably a plus- but on the other hand it kind of looks like I don’t know how to use a tablet.

The eternal advantage of digital art is that you can make it as perfect as you want. However, too-perfect lines can result in stiff, clinical-looking work, so the eternal disadvantage of digital art is also that you can make it as perfect as you want.

This is a disposable Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen, which I usually drift towards as a happy medium between too-sloppy pencils and too-perfect digital inks. (This pen was starting to go dry, so there are more visible rough lines than usual. I could have fixed them, of course, but this was just a quick test.) Sometimes these inks can turn out a little bit blocky or heavy after being scanned and processed- maybe there’s something I should be doing differently during cleanup.