I cannot believe that our tutor was capable of producing such fine art with a G2. He is astonishingly good. Or I am just astonishingly lazy. Or both. It's just it is so hard not to smear things around with a gel pen.
Well, you have to worry about smearing in almost every aspect of traditional art, and markers are just one of the rare exceptions because it's ink dries quickly. It's a big obstacle when you come to nibs and the like. In the professional comics world, well in America, it's pretty expected that you work with nibs (in Japan, it's probably more of a preference).
I've only been working with a G2 for about 5 years now, and I just can't get the same quality with pens that work similar to markers. The way the gel ink absorbs into the paper is just different, and you don't have to worry about bleeding either. The trick to avoiding smearing is to work left > right, and wait about 5 minutes when you're finished before erasing pencil marks (even then, test a small sample of your art that you inked last to make sure).
Anyway, thanks! I'm glad I could help some people out.
