In the collaborative method of producing a comic book used to create the majority of the comics published by major US publishers, the penciller (or penciler) is the artist who interprets the story created by the writer as comics pages drawn in pencil. The story at this stage might be a complete and elaborate script or it may be a plot outline consisting of little more than vague descriptions of each scene with little or no dialogue. The penciller draws on a large sheet, usually Bristol board , using pencil, often a blue pencil that will not photocopy. Usually, the penciller must determine the layout of each page, including the number of panels (sometimes indicated by a script, but it need not be followed precisely), their shapes and positions; in some cases, another artist determines these layouts (called breakdowns) before the penciller begins work. Although the pencils might be "tight", that is, very clean and detailed, the penciller's product is generally quite rough; the finished product is the work of the inker, whose black lines will show up when the page is processed. It could be said that the penciller is the imagination, while the inker and colorist are the production team.

Most well-known comic book artists are pencillers.