Inking Genial Gene

I've been told by inkers whose work I respect and admire that inking is best learned over the work of others. Inking your own work reinforces bad habits; Inking others teaches critical thinking and the ability to interpret.

It's hard to imagine an artist more dissimilar to myself than Gene Colan. My layouts are more like those of Ditko or Kane. Linear, open, no blacks. Gene's work tends towards the photographic. Everything is shades of grey.

Normally, my process is: outline everything, blacks, render. It's something I picked up from Steve's "How we do Spider-Man" strip in Spidey's first annual. With Gene I used a more Sickles, Meskin, Toth approach: blacks, render, outline only what's required to separate open areas.

Happy Trails
Smitty

Factoid of indeterminate interest: I'm not sure I realized this before now but, my first 4 jobs at Marvel were all Gene Colan characters of a sort (Conan wasn't a job, it was luck) Daredevil, Iron Man, Dr Strange, Howard the Duck.