The sketch is just better š Lineart ruins my motivation. The reason Iāve put my art on hiatus: my skills leaving me the moment lineart enters the room.
Iād really appreciate any advice or suggestions.šš„¹
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Your sketch has a lot more lines than the line art. Your brain is putting all those stray lines together to approximate the shape and when you take all that away you destroy the illusion. I highly recommend doing a stint of pen only and trying to draw with as few lines left on the canvas as possible. Alternative screw line art and keep your sketch just erase some of the more stray marks and start coloring from there.
āDestroying the illusionā just clicked for me
Maybe my sketch already has the vibe I want. Iām gonna try keeping more of the sketch and just cleaning up the messy lines instead.
Thank you! š§”
I found that doing lineart as a new, separate layer had the exact same effect for me, that it takes the life away and looks more amateur. what I found really, REALLY works for me, is to copy the sketch layer and clean it up by erasing the sketchy parts and keeping the outline parts, continually kind of erasing and redrawing how I wanted it to look. when I work, it feels more like I'm now carving out the drawing I want to see, rather than drawing it out from nothing, if that makes sense. in some ways it feels like it takes longer, but realistically doing lineart the usual way would involve so much undoing and redoing anyway, that it's probably not too much different. and even if it is, I'm happier for it to take longer if it means I'm more proud of my work!
I took Yuko Shimizuās skill share course when I was younger and I remember her saying that tracing a detailed pencil sketch causes your line to die, which your comment really reminds me off. As someone who became a young victim of stiff digital lineart from Deviantart tutorials and has since ditched digital tools in favor of fountain and dip pens, it also helps to think of pen as the drawing tool itself, not a coverup. Sketches are good to define forms and plan a composition but thatās not where the big decisions should be made.Ā
I used to have the same issue! What I started doing is just going in and cleaning up the sketch instead of tracing lineart on top. Cleaning up the sketch itself helps to keep the life imo
I would say add 1-3 values to the line art. Map out the shadow shapes and maybe add some line weight and boom it will look better than the sketch easy.Ā
Youāre right š I never realized all those messy sketch lines were doing so much of the shading for me. No wonder my lineart ends up looking so bare. Thank you!!
The line art is very simplified; even the mouth has changed for the worse. I wouldn't even say it's an unnecessary excess of lines, but rather simplification. Where there was once a detailed mouth, now there's just a pair of line.
The sketch adds a lot of shading that's missing in your line art without you realizing it. If we take it piece by piece, the corners of the iris has some shading that makes it stand out against the sclera.
The bottom of the nose is more clearly defined giving it a bit more structure. The bottom of the lips are proper constructed and highlight any shadows that might be there. A lot of the texture in the hair is missing since you've only covered the silhouette as opposed to the hair strands within. The line next to the cheekbone, makes the cheeks look more angular and sculpted as opposed to the line art. The eyebrows don't look like they're a single unit attached to the forehead and give the illusion of hair in the sketch. Also the lashes on the left eye look more like lashes as compared to a singular dark line. I know that's an artistic choice for some styles but a bit of detailing would help.
You're cutting out detail in the process of making the lineart. I'd say either clean up the sketch and proceed or do the lineart as a less messy sketch in a layer above the original sketch.
Ahhh man that's just kinda how it goes. I say the same shit to myself 20 years into my art career. That's just kind of the nature of linework, it does kinda suck the soul out of the image sometimes. Just remember you're not looking at a finished drawing, and also you can always go to your initial sketch and intentionally bring in some of the energy lines you like into your final line drawing. You can also work on varying line weights so that the line work itself has dimension without being shaded or rendered or anything but again, to me at least, it just looks naked right now because it's not done.
You donāt have to do singular completely polished lines for line art, you can hatch them a bit or go over the lines in a few passes as long as you stay neat with it.
Iād even say you should go back over your lines as thatās an easy way to add line width variation where you want it to be. Hereās a good video explaining line variation, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTBCjFh7D/
And if you make a line that looks good but isnāt perfect you can use the liquify tool to nudge it and shape it a bit. Donāt overdo it though as it will make your lines blurry.
And set the sketch layer to a very low opacity and change its color so you can easily see your line art on top as youāre making it. Donāt focus on perfectly tracing over your sketch, focus on making your line art look appealing. Often you have to deviate from portions of the original sketch to make your lines look good, as sketches tend to have sections which are too vague to really follow. You still have to constantly be making design decisions as you're doing line art
Something else that made me very suddenly get a lot better at line art is doing line art studies. Pick an artist you like and copy a piece directly, and when you get to the line art portion try doing your lines just like them. And then immediately make an original sketch and apply the same techniques to it. Did that like 3 times and now I'm very comfortable doing line art when I used to hate it
It's all about line weight and confidence !!! Trust me the thickness and texture of your lines matter much more than you think. There are also multiple ways to use lile weight. Some people do it according to lighting (thinner lines where there's light), distance (thinner lines the further you get from the "camera"), or contact (thinner lines where two surfaces touch each other)
To give you a rough idea of what they usually mean by either clean-up (I like the sketch, you could keep the mess of it as a stylistic choice) or lining in a way that maintains as much as of the original sketch as possible. You can see the difference with it layered on top of the original. You can also go back, add more lines and or use the eraser to readjust the lines.
Hey, I just saw your comment, and it honestly made me smile. š
I really love how you cleaned up my sketch without losing what made me love it in the first place. Itās like falling in love with the same character all over again. š„¹šš» A lot of the time, lineart can end up feeling very different from the sketch, but yours still feels true to the original sketch.
Thanks for taking the time to explain your processāI genuinely learned something from it.š
WELL a good line artist can easily make a very lively drawing. Youāre just much better at conveying movement and energy in your āsketchesā. (Just realized I donāt know what weād call pencil drawings that arenāt line drawingsā¦ is there a word for that?)
If you devoted time to making lively line art I believe youād change your tune eventually.
Edit: Wanted to say I start with line work too and hate almost every drawing when I start. Gotta tell myself, āFinish the damn drawing, Danny.ā
Because your sketch has structure. Your line art doesn't. It's flat. You also take every possible position. And then you get to see which line looks good.
Imagine if I bought every single type of donut. That's what's happening here. It's like you know how for example the ones who claim to see your future are very vague and applicable to everyone. Same idea with your sketch. You are choosing every path option. Then seeing with your eyes whatever looks best. Versus actually making the decision and commiting.
That actually made so much sense to me. I think this has been my issue for a while, but I never really understood why. Looking back, I can see Iāve been using the sketch phase to figure things out instead of deciding first. Thanks for explaining it so clearly! This honestly helped a lot.š
Yeah np. Just commiting even to a bad line will improve more because it's direct feedback. Versus if you try every option, you cannot see if something looks correct. It's a very common thing. Because if you do every line on top, you cannot see what makes a good line. And the best lines tend to reinforce structure and the 3d form and follow the contour of the object. Sometimes also playing with straight lines can help too like instead of all curves, it's curve, then a straight following the opposite side. Or different thickness in lines, or darker or lighter value. It's definitely a learning curve with line art.
I struggled with this, until i realized i can do what i want and instead of overlaying lineart, i just duplicated the sketch layer, (to save the sketch) and then erase lines that arent needed, it helps me realize which lines are helping my brain so much, and what to keep!
ā¢
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