Well if you have a pose in your head and your not sure how to put it on paper, you should draw the pose you are thinking about multiple times till you get what you want.
Inking is basically what you said. While you could try to draw dark lines with a pencil it would be a hell of alot easier to use an ink pen, plus it's more efficient.
Crestent lvl 50 Mind/Emp Controller http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...cGallary-1.jpg
http://crestent.deviantart.com/
http://www.creyindustries.com/viewhero.php?id=21809
I usually draw a plain skeleton and have other people critique it. Practice makes perfect. I also have one of those little wooden statues for posing. Reference pictures help, books help, etc.
John Becaro on DA has a great tutorial on digital inking of sorts...
Here it is. 
Like Crest said, draw it multiple times until you get it right. You may do several small practice runs on one page until you feel hte proportions look ok and then draw it large on a separate piece of paper.
Inking has several purposes beyond making a drawing dark enough to scan.
Firstly, inking a drawing solidifies the drawing by chosing which lines wil appear and which lines won't. Since most pencillers will draw things several times to get it right, ghost images can remain. The inker choses which lines to keep and erases the rest.
Secondly, inks can give a drawing a wonderfully organic feel through varied line weight. Pencils don't vary their lines very much, but an ink brush can become really thick or hairline thin with just a small variance on pressure. This leads to the ability to add shadows though line weight that can really make a drawing come to life.
I'm mostly a digital artist and I defer to digital techniques most of the time, but I've seen hand-inked pages that can make me melt with envy.
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I'm mostly a digital artist and I defer to digital techniques most of the time, but I've seen hand-inked pages that can make me melt with envy.
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I can't agree more. I'm really clumsy with most traditional materials.
When I ink IRL, I use a micron pens, but it sucks if you make a misake -- covering it is more difficult than just cntl-z >_>
There's no reason not to have plentiful resources for poses and proportions. DeviantArt also has stock images which you can look at for reference, many many of them are people in cool costumery doing posed action. Also, buy an artist's manequin, the little ones that most art stores have (even Ikea has them) they're quite inexpensive and they are usually fully posable. GI JOE toys also are "proportioned" correctly (the small ones, not any of the larger Barbie sized ones). They're more likely to fall over, however.
Heck I still have 3 or 4 japanese Microman paintable figures for such things.
(edit) One thing I want to assure you: if you're just starting out, or have only been drawing "from your mind" for a short time, don't be discouraged by the idea of using references. There's no reason to assume that your hands will know what to do with what your brain wants, until they're secure with plain old skills. So, continue to use whatever references you need, and when you have finally gotten the hang of that (your hands will know) you'll find yourself using fewer and fewer references. Great masters used live models and plenty of reference drawings, there's no reason you should have to go it alone.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
The traditional approach to most anatomy is to lightly pencil in the skeleton, or skeletal indicators for the top of the head, the skull itself, the shoulders, the chest cavity, the pelvis, the knee and elbow joints, and the ends of the hands and feet.
Okay that hurt just to type it... Over this in a gesture drawing goes a quickie stick figure line drawing, once again to indicate parts of the skeleton, and to show movement.
I think most pencilers use a series of interconnecting spheres over this to show body weight and to fill out the proportions. Over that is a darker line, but the final pencil is the darkest of all, which is the Inker's guide line.
IF you can master the proportions, the spheres, the shapes of various body parts, you can "move" the puppet of the figure however you like. However this IS the hardest part, drawing anatomically correct and adding or not any kind of foreshortening, perspective or tonal quality.
I would suggest getting someone to pose for you, or buying a "mannekin" to practice with. A class would be your best choice, to work on the shapes...
Goodluck.
LJ
thanks for all the great suggestions. I've been standing in poses in front of mirrors (when my roommates aren't around) and taking pictures of my hands for references, and searching googleimages and devart for poses. I just figured there might be a better way, but it sounds like i'm on the right path and now practice is what i need.
Liberty
My 50s:
Hero: Armor Assassin (scrapper), Cross Dresser (scrapper), Surly Seaman (blaster), Defensive End (Tank), Rad Rhino (Cont)
Villain: Beast Infection (Corr), Sweet Zombie Jesus (MM), Milk Weasel (Stalker), Orgullo (MM), Agent Eris (Crab)
I typically go with the movement of the piece first. So I may draw a few very light strokes to show how I want the entire body angled and the arms/legs.
I look for two things: Shape and Silhouette
If both read well, I go on. The other thing to remember is that doing several sketches of the same pose will only make the end result stronger.
Another method of figuring out the pose is try and put yourself in that pose. You could even sit in a chair and feel if you want the arms up in a pose, then put your arms up. I find the connection between feeling what's tense and what feels loose helps a lot.
Also. Reference. Reference. Reference.
Great artists don't just think of poses in their heads, though they CAN, having reference makes the job a whole lot easier when you can look at several photos and go "OH! That's how it is..."
It's really a combination of techniques and what works best for the individual. When it comes to construction though I highly recommend Glen Vilppu.
www.vilppu.com
Good luck!
Ok, so after drawing a few things I now know what I need to improve on next. First, dynamic poses. I do alright if I see a picture of someone else standing there in a pose and can translate my character's body type to it. I suck at getting proportions done properly without a visual cue, so any suggestions has to how to draw the positions i visualize in my head properly?
and secondly, everyone talks about the ink'd versions. What is the step done to do that? Do you pencil something out and then take a pen over it before scanning? And does that help more than just drawing it dark in pencils before scanning?
Thanks
Liberty
My 50s:
Hero: Armor Assassin (scrapper), Cross Dresser (scrapper), Surly Seaman (blaster), Defensive End (Tank), Rad Rhino (Cont)
Villain: Beast Infection (Corr), Sweet Zombie Jesus (MM), Milk Weasel (Stalker), Orgullo (MM), Agent Eris (Crab)