Nib it in the bud

 

It's another art medium breakthrough for me and I'm a dummy for not doing this sooner. The other day I started messing around with a steel-nib dip ink pen, which I hadn't used since college drawing class. I've been using Pigma Sakura Micron felt tip pens for decades. Well, in smoothness and versatility and ease of making a beautiful line, the steel nib blows the felt tip out of the water.

Here's what I doodled. Nothing special, but the lines have a quality felt tip doesn't deliver.

This is especially fortuitous as I'm working on The Vampire's Saint by Corinna Turner, my first comic solely in black and white. With it, I really want to expand my capabilities with black and white, and I was frustrated at the roughness of my lines so far, so this will be perfect. 

And I have this book to help me out: 

Rendering in Pen and Ink by Arthur L. Guptill, published 1976. It's great! Check out these examples:

I have a lot to learn. I will still need the felt tips for initial outlining on pictures to be colored with alcohol-soluble marker, because such markers cause India ink to smudge. But for purely black and white pieces, this is going to be the way to go.