I only recently started to use brush for inking. (pentel brushpen doesn’t count) I hadn’t thought of using one at all because I don’t know anyone who uses it. Basically, if you are doing manga, you are either using multiliner, dip pen, or do it digitally. I have used all of those options, and I wasn’t happy with any of them. Dip pen is by far my favorite, but it came with problems of its own. First is that the supply. I can only buy them online. Second is that each nib doesn’t last long, and you have to clean it fairly often, thus making it pretty cumbersome to use. Digital inking is good for fast and clean job, but my problem with it is that I can’t make it stop looking so… digital. It looked digital even when pro used it, so I guess it can’t be helped.

Recently though, I came to realize that I was trapped in ‘manga’ bubbles. A lot of what I believed and what I have done revolved around the idealistic image of ‘manga’ but not necessarily the real ‘manga’ itself. What happened last year changed me. It hit me like a brick in the face, and I realized that I just wanted to do comics, sequential art, graphic novel, whatever, and I can do it anyway I want, however I want, with whatever tools I want. Why did I limit myself with the prospect of manga? It’s just a catchword.

I started reading other kind of comics and liked some and hated some, which is perfectly normal when I came to think about it. I probably only like about 5% of all manga, but I started to appreciate other style of works beyond “manga” and started to try different things.

That’s when I started to try brush and ink.

You can look at my earlier attempts I posted on this blog. While they didn’t come out perfect or even good, I like them enough to pursue this course. I found out that the brush I use is crappy and there are inks better suited these kinds of projects. A quick browsing through dickblick and wiki introduced me to types of brushes than I have ever heard of or will ever remember. I honestly never knew that there were so many kinds or how they are all different. After reading them all, and quick round of googling, I decided to try Full belly round size 2 kolinsky sable with Higgins color ink as well as PH Martin. The brush just arrived today, and here’s result:

As you can see, it can produce much finer lines than anything I have ever used before. Even a school pen nib (the smallest and finest line of among the nibs) can not do that, and a huge plus is the fact that I don’t have to clean it so often and didn’t need to shake out excess ink as much as when I use my crappy synthetic hair brush or g-pen for that matter.

I’ll have to use it for real inking to test its durability and how well it will perform when it’s not new. I hope it lasts longer than a month or 30 pages which is how long my synthetic brush lasted.

As for inks, Higgins performed better than Dr. Ph Martin’s. Higgins is more ‘viscous’ (it doesn’t flow out of the tip so much thus making finer line and last longer between dip) but less opaque. Next time I’ll try the Higgins black magic to see if it’s any better.

By the way, I still like manga, if by manga you mean just comics, and it is still my passion and my inspiration. I just came to realize that I don’t have to carry any excess baggage that comes with the word itself.

As you can see: