Well I have some pretty decent pencil sketches. I have no scanner so can't really show them but I was thinking about inking them. Now I have never ever done this before and I really don't want to ruin my sketches cause I'm kinda proud off them.

1) Can I preserve my shadow works when i've inked it ?
( I make shadows by scribling my pencil and then brushing it with an
eraser... gives it a nice effect that I wan't to preserve... possible?
how?)
2) What equipment is needed to do a decent job ?

Okay I took pictures of the scetches in question so you guys have an idea of what I'm talking about.

Plz note : Pictures were taking with my webcam so quality is very very poor... I enhanced them with photoshop to make them as clear as possible... (higher contrast, sharpen, changing of colours)... the originals are all pencil drawings.. also because of my light shadows they were not picked up by the webcam and are not shown... (apologies)

http://lerweb.khlim.be/~tiger/stevenenglicky/art/lynn.jpg

http://lerweb.khlim.be/~tiger/stevenenglicky/art/joan.jpg

http://lerweb.khlim.be/~tiger/stevenenglicky/art/draak.jpg

Not really....unless maybe you use some washes, but then again I am not inker. there are different shading methods within inking like stippling, hatching etc....but they all produce very different results than what I think you are aiming for.

What Steeldolphin said. I usually do cross hatching, but i got my techniques looking at chinise comic books they have beautiful inking). To not mess up your work, get some tracing paper and transfer it to a new paper and end up with two copies. YOu can mess up as many times as you want and never mess up the original ;)