SKETCH
PENCIL
INK
COLOR
After designing the layout in "thumbnail" sketches, I rough out the images in colored pencil on tracing paper at the size the book will be printed. At this time I was using an HB pencil. You use whatever suits your particular (or in my case, peculiar) manner of working.
After refining the sketch on another layer of tracing paper, I enlarge the image approx. 150% on a copy machine. Using a light box I trace the drawing onto 2 ply bristol board using graphite pencil. Some folks prefer non-photo blue pencils, so that no clean-up erasing will be needed (after inking). Final refinements are done at this stage.
I pencil tightly to leave the inker as little guess work as possible. However, pencil and ink are two different mediums, so the inker must translate the pencils into what can be done with ink. A good inker, like Jimmy Palmiotti here, can retain the quailty of the drawing while adding his creative energy to the whole. The ink is applied directly on the pencil art.
Often a colorist (James Sinclair, here) designs on a comics-sized copy of the inked page in watercolors, markers, and colored pencils. This can be used as a guide for computer artists to create the information, called "separations" which the printer will use. Beautiful stuff can be done with this technology. But like every thing else, the quality of the final product is up to the creativity, skills, and sincerity of the artists involved. Not to mention the budget.
