Dearest Bane created this digital inking tutorial just for the Artists Tutorial Collective! Pay his gallery a visit at DeviantART.

	Hello hello, kiddies! I am Bane, and I will be your guide through these various simple steps for digital inking. I myself like to use Corel Painter 7 because it has a Pen tool that gives me the type of lines I would normally create if I inked by hand, using nibs and traditional ink on bristol (smooth of course ). I can also create the same style with 'Open Canvas' but it takes more time. I use a graphic tablet, emulating the basic funtion of inking through this digital medium. Here we have my pencil work of "Jack the Ripper", everybody's favorite religious heretic, or so we think. Maybe he went around killing prostitutes because they gave him the herp. I think it was popular thing to have back in the 1800s... that and warts. His multiple drunken adventures often lead to the harlots I'm guessing. And since he can't remember wich one gave him the STDs, they all need to go! I commemorate Jack's frailty with this illistration....Let's start inking!
	Here we have the sketch all ready and raring to go. I have it open in the Painter application along with my layer box prominently displayed for all to see. I will be using only two colors, black and white. The eraser doesn't give the precision I need to correct my lines and mistakes. It might be diffrent for your experiences, but this is my preference. I will be switching back and forth between black and white throughout the process, which might be a problem for some people's coloring style. You'll want to do all of your inking on a Multiply mode layer. I have the Pen menu open as you can see. Select "Scratchboard", for it is the creature that will give you that inking style that you so desire. The size of my image is 900x1238 pixels. I'm sure you can work at a much larger size and have it looking lovely, but for now this will be fantastical. Make sure the layer you ink on is seperated from the orignal pencil work. Also lower the opacity on the sketch so it'll be easier for you to see the results of your inking prowess.
	I started the inking process - nib width is 2.3 and opacity is 80%. Now i'm working on the face as youse can see. I also show on the right how the progress is comming along so far. Make sure you hide the pencil layer at times to check the stability and clarity of your lines. You'll be doing alot of thin and thick lines (depending on the project) so you want to make sure the lines are clear, clean and stable. You don't want it to look good sitting ontop of the pencil work just to find later on that it has shaky, jaggy lines. When inking you are doing the final draft of your piece, so if there are small errors within the pencil work like the jawline doesn't match or the eyes are a bit crooked, feel free to correct these errors. And since you're doing it on a seperate layer and on the computer, you neither waste paper, ink, or the inkers best friend, white out. We are a friend of trees today.
	Jack is coming to life now! Soon he will start his midnight murder spree. Jack wants you to know that while inking to relax your jaw, tension in the body is often deferred to the hands. It can cause the hands to be stiff and you need to have fluid movements when inking. It's always good to work on a single area when inking as well. I like to work from top to bottom, starting with the head and going down to the feet. If you are skipping around you might forget to ink a few lines, and that's never good when you apply this practice outside of the digital arena. Line weight (the width of your lines) is important. Diffrent types of lines can be used depending on the material or the light source. Thicker lines are used in images to create a diffrence in perspective. Say a tree is closer to the viewer then the others back off in the distance -don't use the same line weight for both. The tree in front of you would naturally have thicker lines (don't make them too thick though). Line weight alone can help create the perspective illusion and add more variety to your piece.
	Here I point out the option I use for doing straight line work. As you can see, it has the clever title of "straight lines". Choose the width that's right for you in the size option (i'm sure you've already figured that out though). I use the Freehand option for doing all the other lines and touching up my mistakes with the white ink. In the red, baby coffin-like shape I show you an example of messy line(top) and a line that was cleaned up a bit. Just be patient with the lines, the more you work at it the faster you'll be.
	Whew! All finished, aren't you proud? No? Bland and boring, needs a background you say? Hm.....
	Ta-da! Finished with the inks! I decided to add some story elements to the picture. I drew them in on a seperate layer so it was easy. All the straight line work can be done in Painter with either the pen or pencil tools. I used the white ink effects to edit parts of the picture, like the bleeding panel behind Jack, etc. I wish I could just tell you how to become a great inker... but it doesn't work that way... Or does it? The secret is time and practice and even then nobody is perfect. But, I hope this will help you get started. So, ink away puppets! Have fun. You can see a larger version of the finished piece here.