Geeky

Posted on Aug 23, 2014

It's Totally Mesmerizing To Watch Artists Draw Comics

They make it all look sooooo easy.

BuzzFeed Staff

It doesn't take much time to read a comics page, but it's incredibly time consuming to draw a comic book page.

Comic pages are typically drawn in pencil first, then finished with a variety of techniques. The time it takes to fully realize a page in a color comic is so labor intensive that most comic companies divide that labor between a handful of specialized artists.

The inker – who is sometimes the sole illustrator of a comic – finishes the penciled art with ink, or a simulation of ink in a computer program.

One artist, Ramon K. Perez, has uploaded several videos to his Instagram account that shows how the inking process works.

In this time lapse clip, you can watch as Perez transforms a loose sketch into a gorgeous finished drawing by "inking" it in PhotoShop.

Here's another where he inks a drawing of Venom.

Here's the finished versions of both images.

Perez also inks comics the old fashioned way, with pens and brushes.

Francis Manapul, Perez's studio mate at the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design in Toronto, is also fond of showing his inking process on Instagram.

Manapul is currently the illustrator and co-writer of Batman: Detective Comics for DC Comics.

He recently shared a series of Instagrams in which he showed each step in drawing an image of Batman.

He starts off with a pencil sketch.

Then he sharpens the outlines with a pen and ink.

He draws in narrow lines and small details with a pen.

Larger black areas are inked with a brush.

Then he adds shading with washed out ink.

And adds as few splashes of white paint for effect.

When that's all done, he scans the page into PhotoShop and puts in a few finishing touches.

There's a lot more videos of inkers at work out there. Here's a time lapse clip in which veteran inker Scott Williams inks a page of Jim Lee's pencils for Superman Unchained.

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It's Totally Mesmerizing To Watch Artists Draw Comics

It doesn't take much time to read a comics page, but it's incredibly time consuming to draw a comic book page.

The inker – who is sometimes the sole illustrator of a comic – finishes the penciled art with ink, or a simulation of ink in a computer program.

One artist, Ramon K. Perez, has uploaded several videos to his Instagram account that shows how the inking process works.

In this time lapse clip, you can watch as Perez transforms a loose sketch into a gorgeous finished drawing by "inking" it in PhotoShop.

Here's another where he inks a drawing of Venom.

Here's the finished versions of both images.

Perez also inks comics the old fashioned way, with pens and brushes.

Francis Manapul, Perez's studio mate at the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design in Toronto, is also fond of showing his inking process on Instagram.

Manapul is currently the illustrator and co-writer of Batman: Detective Comics for DC Comics.

He recently shared a series of Instagrams in which he showed each step in drawing an image of Batman.

He starts off with a pencil sketch.

Then he sharpens the outlines with a pen and ink.

He draws in narrow lines and small details with a pen.

Larger black areas are inked with a brush.

Then he adds shading with washed out ink.

And adds as few splashes of white paint for effect.

When that's all done, he scans the page into PhotoShop and puts in a few finishing touches.

There's a lot more videos of inkers at work out there. Here's a time lapse clip in which veteran inker Scott Williams inks a page of Jim Lee's pencils for Superman Unchained.

View this video on YouTube

This tutorial video by Jazmin Santiago shows every step of her drawing process in PhotoShop.

View this video on YouTube

And this video by Justin Anville is a time lapse of his meticulous inking process.

View this video on YouTube

It's Totally Mesmerizing To Watch Artists Draw Comics

It doesn't take much time to read a comics page, but it's incredibly time consuming to draw a comic book page.

The inker – who is sometimes the sole illustrator of a comic – finishes the penciled art with ink, or a simulation of ink in a computer program.

One artist, Ramon K. Perez, has uploaded several videos to his Instagram account that shows how the inking process works.

In this time lapse clip, you can watch as Perez transforms a loose sketch into a gorgeous finished drawing by "inking" it in PhotoShop.

Here's another where he inks a drawing of Venom.

Here's the finished versions of both images.

Perez also inks comics the old fashioned way, with pens and brushes.

Francis Manapul, Perez's studio mate at the Royal Academy of Illustration and Design in Toronto, is also fond of showing his inking process on Instagram.

Manapul is currently the illustrator and co-writer of Batman: Detective Comics for DC Comics.

He recently shared a series of Instagrams in which he showed each step in drawing an image of Batman.

He starts off with a pencil sketch.

Then he sharpens the outlines with a pen and ink.

He draws in narrow lines and small details with a pen.

Larger black areas are inked with a brush.

Then he adds shading with washed out ink.

And adds as few splashes of white paint for effect.

When that's all done, he scans the page into PhotoShop and puts in a few finishing touches.

There's a lot more videos of inkers at work out there. Here's a time lapse clip in which veteran inker Scott Williams inks a page of Jim Lee's pencils for Superman Unchained.

View this video on YouTube

This tutorial video by Jazmin Santiago shows every step of her drawing process in PhotoShop.

View this video on YouTube

And this video by Justin Anville is a time lapse of his meticulous inking process.

View this video on YouTube

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