Howdy there Primate Posse™! Here is the first Friday comic in weeks! I’m planning to increase my comic output over the next while. We’ll see how it goes…

In the meantime, I thought I’d talk about something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while – Inking! I mentioned in an earlier post that I had a prof in art school who told me that my inking was terrible, and he was right. He also encouraged me to ink with a brush and after dabbling with brush pens, Pitt artist’s pens and crow quill pens, I think I can say that I’ve finally settled on a Windsor and Newton Series 7 #2 brush with a nice bottle of India Ink! (although I have been using Pitt’s [not the brush ones] to do some of the smaller details like eyes – mind you, I inked an entire strip with only the brush today! It will appear soon) I actually find the brush easier to control than Pigma brush pens and the Pitt brush pens. And I think I can honestly say that my inking is finally not terrible.

Having said that it’s not as slick and professional as many many of my webcomic (and other comic) colleagues. But, does anyone else think that really really good inking looks almost mechanical? Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate and am very impressed with that skill, but there’s something about my own line that I like quite a lot. It is clearly made by hand, and I like that. It seems to me that Watterson’s line was clearly hand drawn as well (not that I’m comparing ANYTHING about my strip to the great Watterson (pees be upon him). Anyway, any thoughts from the Posse™?

No Stan song to share today, but please visit standickie.com for more!