zahtz asked: How do you do your amazing inks?

Oh wow, I’m flattered you like my line work!

I have a feeling this may be related to the pokemon collab I just worked on, but then again, I’m not sure!

I actually work differently with lines depending on what needs to be “inked.”  I use quotes because 99% of the time work digitally.  Anyway, so for the pokemon I inked (luxray), I wanted to have something dynamic because: 1.) it’s an electric pokemon, so it should have some energy to it (i should think) and 2.) the sketch was already feeling dramatic to me from the pose and the way it was framed.  Granted, I think the true level of intensity came from the amazing color work!

My love for the colors aside, I used Adobe Illustrator to create the lines!  I used the pen tool, not the paint tool.  Nothing against the paint brush in Illustrator, but I don’t think you can get as much out of it.  Illustrator is a vector program, meaning it works with shapes, and the pen tool allows you to create any shape you want (just outlines, just fill, or both)!  So my inks for luxray are actually just a bunch of combined black shapes.  It may seem kinda weird to work like that, but I really suggest playing around in that program.  I think it’s incredibly fun!

As for my other line work, i use Photoshop.  I like having really crisp, delicate, and flowy lines.  I don’t use any speific brush for that, just one of the defaults, but I make it really small (3 - 5 depending on the size of the image).  That way, you can’t see that they are actually kinda blurry (because Photoshop is not actually good for lines, in my opinion).  So to get the desired lines, it’s a lot of quick hand movements with my tablet, and a lot of undo-ing and trying again until I get the lines I want!

Hope that was helpful!  Sorry I ended up writing a bunch… I just get so into talking about this kinda thing!