All images © 2007 Mike Scagliotti

Why swim in a bathing suit, when you can ink with a brush? Sure enough, inking with a brush provides the most enjoyable and alluring style you can get on the comic book page. Not only does it look svelte and groovy, but it feels great.

Seriously, here’s the deal: an ink brush can speak all sorts of rad shapes and sizes. With a certain level of control, you can get this single tool to do just about anything you want. However, it will always want to speak it's own language (like any tool), and that is the language of sexy curves and tapers, earthy wobbles and plush, feathery layerings of strokes. This is the stuff  the brush most wants to do. The deeper you explore and amplify the weird language of the brush, the more control you will have over its awesome idiosyncracies.

Get Abstract

Think of the jauntiest, most bad-ass Chinese calligraphy you've ever seen. You know how you can almost see the brush strokes moving before your eyes? Skidding and sliding, hopping and plopping across the page? Do that often as an exercise.

Think of yourself as a magician conjuring shapes from the other dimension onto the page. Draw anything: human figures, architecture, fantasy stuff, pure abstraction, whatever. Just do it fast, and lose control and dance your hand in and out of various line weight pressures. That's it: dance with the brush. Goof off. Explore all the different ways to move your hand across the page and dig the funky shapes that appear.

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