Making mistakes in ink is a gigantic bummer. I think that it's likeliest the biggest cause of people shying away from ink work entirely. So how do you cope with it?

My process is to stand at least ten feet away from the drawing and then freak out. Then have a scotch and calm down.

Then, I make a rational assessment. If I think I can continue to ink effectively without making the correction yet, I live with it and move on, making a small mark in non-repro blue pencil to remind myself where to come back to. If the mistake is a bigger one, or it obscures other art, I wait for the ink to dry completely, then erase the pencils under the error, and touch it up with zinc white gouache, straight from the tube, applied with a small palette knife and trowelled smooth. Then I rework any critical marks on the dried gouache in non-repro blue and continue as before.

I never ever use wite-out or any other such correction fluid. It does not provide a stable surface to ink over. Although I have heard that this new correction tape can be quite handy. Haven't tried it yet, though.

And so? Anyone else?

--M

@ Mr. Average - Cool topic! I've mentioned in a couple of other posts about inking that one of the things I've had to learn to do was to embrace the mistakes. Once I wrapped my head around that, my work actually improved. I actually think this is the hardest thing for everyone. You get so used to drawing in pencil and you have so much control. Inking isn't like that.

Basically I look at it like this: is the mistake bad? or is it interesting? does it actually add something to the work that I hadn't thought of?

So, when I'm inking and something goes where I hadn't expected, I either correct it (always with white guache or white acrylic paint - whiteout, as you said, doesn't work and the tape is plastic-like and doesn't work to well with ink I find) or include it into the final art. I actually think of the painting as part of the process and work back-and-forth between ink and paint to try to achieve the final art.

For an example, in my post in the Crit section (ink studies 2) I dropped a big ink drop right over the hair! So a quick f-bomb later, I continued on, let it dry and then came back and painted it out along with other parts that needed some white paint. More ink, more paint, etc. At the end, you shouldn't be able to tell (I hope!).

I don't ink on my pencils so I never freak out. I use a light table and the inking is done on a separate piece of paper. I can easily start again (especially in case I haven't made much progress yet) or fix it with white paint or even fix it digitally in Photoshop. Sometimes I even ink a certain part on yet another piece of paper and edit that part in Photoshop, deleting the bad inking and replacing it with the improved one.
There's no reason to freak out about it. Inking mistakes aren't exactly the end of the world. That said, I do freak out for no good reason occasionally so I know how it goes...

I've accepted that there will always be mistakes in my inking, so I just fix it after scanning in and using a photoshop brush that's textured to mimic the original lines. I don't have anywhere near enough patience to cover it with white and re-ink.

I mess up a lot. Comes with not knowing what I'm doing really. I just fix it in photoshop. I don't plan on selling my originals so no big deal.

Like iaviv I don't ink over my pencils either, I either ink digitally or with a lightbox, so I don't freak out... too much. I pencil so loose that a big mistake that can't be painted over with white acrylic (like a huge spill) ruins what amounts to most of my drawing process for the page. If its unfixable, I might curl into a little ball and cry for a minute or two before I just... suck it up and start over. Though if it's too horrible for whiteout, but not to horrible to be re-inked just as a panel and pasted on top of the page... yeah I do that.

Yeah, I think the lightbox is the best way to go in terms of inking. That way if you screw up terribly, you still have the original penciling available. Saves time and face since you can ditch the screw ups and not have to erase the pencils below.
Of course, I try to avoid making mistakes, but I think if I made one I would try to fix it. I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to my work. Which could be good or bad.

This topic also makes me a little curious. Has anyone here ever tried spattering effects? I recall Frank Miller saying that some of his best work with that is when it goes right over a character's face, even if it's an accident.

No I am too scared I've seen people do it - live. It freaks me out. I tried it like.. once. Not even on a comic, but that was enough for me I guess. I'm a control freak too - a big one. There's just no way. But I admit - I like how it looks.

I use spattering and drops of ink all the time... and what you describe above just happened to me! I flicked some ink at a recent page I was inking and a HUGE (and I mean HUGE!) drop of ink went right across the head of one of the characters. So I did my normal routine of waiting until it was dry, painted over it with white and re-did the spot where the mistake happened. No big deal!

I love ink splatter and drops way too much to not do it. Yeah mistakes happen, but more often than not, the results are worth it.

I used to do ink splatters ALL THE TIME on my pages when I inked them. One of the tricks I used was something called a liquid mask? (I don't remember the exact name of the product but it comes in a bottle and has a similar consistency of rubber cement that you can quickly paint over important parts of your image before you start flinging ink everywhere. then when it all dries, you just peel off the liquid mask and it's still clean under it.

Another thing, I used an old toothbrush to do my best ink splatters.

I've used the ink mask stuff as well and though it works, I found it to be a pain in the butt most of the time. You can't always get it in tiny spots and inevitably it ended up wrecking a lot of brushes.

You can also get clear sheets of mask that you place on top of you work like cling film and then carefully cut around to "mask" the pieces where you don't want ink. Peel the other stuff off and you're ready to go. When it's done, the mask peels off cleanly. I mainly just lie paper over parts that I don't want spatter to cover now. (the incident above was just a bad break... the ink went in the right panel, but the wrong spot! It happens)

Maybe I'm impatient, but painting out stuff with white paint is the fastest and most effective way to cover stuff up. I paint back into the ink anyway, so it fits with my process.

@Jason - I'm still using the same toothbrush that I have been since I was in high school like 15 years ago. It's the best way to do spatter!

Yay for control freaks? Haha! I prefer control freaks when it comes to art really.
When I first tried it, I ended up having little drops in the wrong panels with an experiment (thankfully just an experiment), so I'll probably just cover up them with thicker paper when I get to that point. I'll have to get some white paint just in-case though.
I do feel the results are just something you can't replicate any other way though. It looks more natural than if you had planned out every speck and drop.

@Jason: I never thought of using a toothbrush, I've have to experiment with that some! Thanks for the idea!