While this may seem like the question between rather to stop and have finished pencil artwork, really this is actually the debate between whether to move on to doing the color on top of the penciled artwork rather than inking. Think of this as a "loose" style. Inking is the norm, but that doesn't mean it's the only way. Just like everything, you have to choose a preference. But if you decide to ink, you're going to have to choose between traditional or digital means.

Traditional is as simple as grabbing your pen and going over your lines. Of course, we need to probably go into a little more than just basic pens. You're going to want to look into art pens like Micron pens. There's also the option of using a quill tip to work with.

If you want to go for very dynamic lines that pop on their own and have a really cool style, mastering the quill is a great method. Quills can create some absolutely stunning artwork.

A quill pen can create very dynamic lines.

If you work with Micron pens though, you may have a decent shot of imitating the style of a quill without the hassle. You can press harder to make the micron pens thicken their line. Also, you can get several tip sizes to begin with. It should only be noted that very thin pens like .05mm don't get thicker, they usually only will get ruined.

Micron pens are pressure sensitive.

You want to finish your line work up and then use an eraser to take up your pencil lines. All that will be left will be the clean ink, assuming you didn't draw too darkly with your pencil marks and have areas that won't come up. If that's the case, no worries you can always clean things up in Photoshop a bit.

So it's type to get out the scanner and scan your artwork. Don't forget if you plan to use your art professionally to at least scan at 300 DPI. Next we'll work on cleaning up the art.

Cleaning up with "Levels"
To clean up any smudges and lines left on your paper, start by opening up the levels menu. To do so, go to the menu bar at the top and navigate to Image>Adjustments>Levels... Alternatively, you can use the shortcut command of Shift+L

How to get to the levels command.

Your basic input levels should be 0, 1.0, and 255. These are the shadows, midtones, and highlights respectively. The easiest way to use them is to drag the corresponding arrows below the number values.

The levels toolbox

Dragging the left shadows slider, brings out all the darks, not messing with the lights. Of course, you will have some areas that have a tiny bit of darkness that will become clearer, such as smudges on the page. To fix that, you'll mess with the highlights (the right white) and the midtones (the center) sliders.

Using the shadows slider to darken the line-art.

For the most part, dragging the highlights slider towards the center a bit will be enough to remove the smudges and extra lines from your paper. The only reason you may need the midtones slider is if using the highlights slider starts to mess up any of your actual lines. You can mess with all 3 to get the best overall look for your artwork.

Bring out the highlights.

Cleaning up with the Dodge Tool.
Alternatively, you can use the dodge tool from the tool bar. If either the burn tool or the sponge tool are active in the slot, you'll have to click and hold on the spot until the little menu opens up to let you select the dodge tool.

The dodge tool...

If you take the dodge tool and set it's settings (at the top under the menu bar) to "Highlights" you can easily get rid of smudges and marks. This can be used in conjunction with the Levels menu above to finish cleaning up areas that were not easily removed already.

The dodge tool cleaning up the remains...

Desaturate
The only other thing you may want to consider is desaturating your linework, if it scanned and had too much of a tint like a purple or blue color to it. (A lot of pencil work in particular can come across purplish when scanned on cheap scanners.) To quickly desaturate an image, go to in the top menu bar to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation... or use the shortcut command of ctrl+u.

Notice the subtle change when the linework is desaturated.

You can there drag the saturation bar to the left. Taking it all the way to -100 is full desaturation, and anywhere in between desaturates it by that much percent.

If you have a tablet, or if you are very patient with a mouse, you may choose to instead ink on the computer in Photoshop. Overall, this method is superior in my mind, as it can make things simpler later on, mainly during coloring and cleaning up your linework as I explain how to do above. Your basically going to be using the brush tool and the eraser tool here.

Note: If you have a tablet, it will probably have the eraser built in to the back side of pen that automatically accesses the eraser when you work with it, so you only need to go to the eraser menu to change the settings.

Of course first we have to scan the artwork in, just as above. Making sure to scan in at least 300 DPI we're ready to get started. Open the image in Photoshop and let's begin.

Starting layers
First thing you need to do is get your layers set up. (If you didn't already, you may want to read the layers portion in the "Tools" section of this guide.) The first thing you want to do is make the pencil layer editable. To do that, double-click on the layer. When the "New Layer" box comes up, either re-name it to something you want like "pencils" and click "OK".

Making the background layer editable...

Now we can edit the layer, moving it around and changing its layer order. If you save the document now, you can save it as a .psd file, which is Photoshop's default format and allows you to save all your layers for easy editing.

If you're going to be inking on the computer, unlike on paper, you have a great advantage. At this point, before you actually start inking, you may want to do the frames, as is describes in the next section. The reason this is nice is you can use the frames as a guide, rather than having to clean up the lines that overlap the frames later.

Inking
To start inking, first thing you'll want to do is create a new layer. There's a few options to doing this. You can go to the menu bar at the top and select Layer>New>Layer... or simply use the shortcut key Shift+Ctrl+N.

Creating a new layer...

Possibly the most convenient way is to press the "Create a new layer" button on the layer panel itself.

New layer button on the Layers menu...

A new layer will have been created, most likely titled "Layer 1" unless you've already made a layer before. You can rename the layer by double-clicking on the layer's title "Layer 1" text. You want to make sure at this point that the layer you're going to design your lines on is above the pencil sketch, because as described in the "Tools" section, it won't be visible otherwise. Remember the pencil layer is a solid image and will cover anything it's above.

Remember, with layer orders, it's like pieces of glass on top of another.

Now select the brush tool from the tool menu and adjust it's settings in the tool menu. (Located at the top under the menu bar) You want to have a fairly small brush size, probably around 5-6 or less at 300 DPI if you're using a tablet with pressure sensitivity at this point. You may want to go smaller if you aren't using a tablet. Also, you may want to go bigger if it fits your preference of style. That is up to you. To set the brush size, you change the "Master Diameter" selector. At this point will also want to make sure the "Hardness" is set to 100%. This will create a nice crisp line.

The tool options bar changes depending on which tool you're using.

Now it's time to start actually drawing. This part is fairly self-explanatory. Simply use your original artwork as you would if you were inking on paper and trace the lines on your new layer. (Always double-check to make sure you're not working on the pencil layer as whichever layer you click last will be the current layer you're drawing on.)

One of the biggest overlooked things can be making your linework look interesting on its own. Most people are more interested in the color that they forget to do this. If your style doesn't demand it, you may not want to over- exaggerate your lines though as it can begin to look tacky if done too much. The main thing we're looking for here is different levels in thickness for the lines.

The simplest kind of dynamic lines and the most often used in "anime" styled images is simply making things that are closer thicker. The darker lines imply the closeness of the object in relation to the other things.

Accenting a character's lines in front will make that character feel closer.

Because of things looking bigger when their lines are thicker, you want to make sure and never have a character in the back have lines thicker than a character up front. It will cause they eye to get confused as it is getting mixed signals.

Overlaps
One of the most basic areas you can use dynamic line is when an object overlaps another, such as how a chin is technically out in front of a character when they are facing the camera. You can draw the line there a little thicker to signify it actually overlaps the neck. This effect works in about any area that an overlap occurs.

The thicker line implies depth.

This is one of the absolute most important things about inking if you plan to use the simpler "fill" methods later during color. When you start filling in the color you can quickly fill large areas by using the "Paint bucket" tool and clicking in an area. The problem is that the paint bucket fills areas that connect. So, if you have a gap in part of your linework, you'll have to block it off or it will fill beyond the line too.

The paint bucket can only fill a solid area with no gaps correctly.

That's why it's important to take a little extra time to make sure the lines are closed while you're inking. After you practice at it enough, you will get used to filling the gaps so well, you won't even notice you filled everything.

If everything's closed off, you'll get a nice clean fill.