People who like lineart please tell me your secrets

[BoomerZ]

With digital, go from roughs to line art. If you go from roughs, to finished pencils to inks, you are literally tracing over pencils and adding an extra step. Example is hair. Just make a rough of where the hair is. Then in the inking phase actually do the work of waves.

[allenT]

I think the best way is to first get yourself a paper & try different types of pen or even brushes.
For me l like inking traditionally, and there's no one way to ink. Some people i watch ink like a calligrapher, slow and precise, and some just do quick & sketchy inks. Some are in-between.

Experiment on papers. let the ink flow. Hope you can realize the joy of inking.
Try fineliners for a begin.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Don't like lineart myself, so not sure if my input is valuable here, but what makes you feel the need to do a lot of inking now if you never did it back when doing traditional? I do digital and don't do lineart (I sometimes call my final lines 'inking' for lack of a better word, but they're really quite rough and look more like sketches)

[TheSingularitySeed]

Thank for your inputs

I appreciate the advice. I definitely do need more practice with traditional inking.

I do lineart because I like the look of clean lines but for some reason I just can't enjoy the process of it.
Sketching, coloring, and shading is really relaxing and then lineart I'm just waiting for it to be over. I'm not sure why. I think because it doesn't feel that visually different from the sketch?

I'm curious about the mindset of people who do like it.

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

I wouldn't say I like inking, but I also prefer clean lines, and they make my marker work look about a million times better, so I not only ink my pencil lines before I color, I go back AFTER I color and clean them up again. I'd never, ever do this if it didn't make a big difference in my finished product.

What makes inking more bearable, though, is focusing on my line weights. Instead of just feeling like I'm tracing my pencil lines, paying attention to line weights gives me another way to add meaningful alterations to the image (making some lines thicker to imply heavy, solid things, and some lines thinner to imply lighter, airy, more delicate things, creating textures I didn't bother to do with the sketch layer, but can't effectively do with color, etc).

Basically, I can't tell you how to LIKE it, but it might help to do something with the linework that contributes to the image in a meaningful way so that at least it doesn't feel pointless.

[Legendofgenii]

Could you develop a style that doesn’t need inking? Or just neatened up your sketch lines?

I do enjoy the inking stage, but sometimes I feel my sketches have more life and movement.

[ShidoDraws]

I recommend getting into sketching using a thicker brush, hold your pen lightly when lining your work, the lines will look more lively than when you use a thin brush and pressing down hard on your canvas.

Traditionally I don't line my work as much but when I do I tend to also hold my pen lightly and come back making the lines thicker later. The same can be done for digital as well.

[smokesalty]

I just like knowing that the planning of a page is complete and that now I'm refining it. I'm just tracing over lines with a nice quick brush stroke and cleaning up my favourite panels. I like that it doesn't need to be perfect but that I have my sketch to guide me.

Colouring on the other hand... my gaps in my lineart come back to bite me and I just hate doing it. If I could pay for a base colourist I would.

[TheSingularitySeed]

@Scarlet_Cryptid

I like this suggestion.
I do notice I like doing small details with lineart and not long sweeping lines. The details always stand out better when inked.

@Legendofgenii
I did try sketchy vs clean line style once.
I asked my friends to vote impartially and they unanimously picked the clean lineart lol
The messiness of the sketch is sometimes more lively though, I agree.

@ShidoDraws
Yeah I definitely press pretty hard when I ink.
I used to use a thick brush then use a filter to make it thinner after which didn't look great and then I switched to thin brush and hard presses. Looks better but takes longer.
I definitely need better brush control.

@smokesalty
I appreciate this insight. That's a nice way to think about it.

[darthmongoose]

I love line art! I like painting too, and I have tried making a lineless comic in the past, but ultimately I feel like I just express myself best with lines.
I guess my top tips are:

1. Get a tablet or pen that you really like and feel in control of and that gives you a result that looks consistently good. Some people will always try to make you draw how they draw, but ignore that. For example, some people like to draw from the elbow with big sweeping strokes and insist that bigger tablet = better art, but I've always drawn very small and tight using my wrist, so I work best on a medium intuos tablet with felt nibs for extra friction. I can't draw well on an iPad with an apple pencil because it's too big and slippery for me.

2. Choose a style that looks good with how you like to draw and get or create tools for that. Some people do scribbly or loose lines and make it look amazing like Quentin Blake, some are really tight, fine and controlled like Sonia Leong. My chunky but relatively tight, bouncy inking style was influenced a lot by the work of Jack Kirby, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Mid 00s CLAMP and Hiromu Arakawa. I always customise my pens in clip studio to have an exaggerated pressure curve to give me big variations in line weight with one pen and to work with my generally light pressure (mostly because I'm physically quite small and, as mentioned, I draw from the wrist more than the elbow). I really admire single-line-weight artists like Moebius though, and would love to try that "mono pen" style on a different comic some time.

3. You don't have to do freehand line art if it's not your bag. Painting, vector lines or shapes, pixel art, photo or stock art montage and 3D models are all options.

[TheSingularitySeed]

Thank you for your advice.

I remember that "draw from the elbow" tip from an art class and couldn't get the hang of it. Glad to know others prefer the wrist.

Also this thread encouraged me to go with a lighter pressure and I have no idea why I didn't try that before. The difference in feel is very noticeable.

Thank you all for your input.
Feel free to share more!

[Fafnir]

I reccomend the Digital Sketching tutorials from CTRL paint. Particularly the Refined lines one.
I sucked at digital art until I did these. He has alot of really good tips and tricks for work flow and productivity.

I mean.. I still struggle with linework. I think its a mileage thing, like getting the muscle memory of drawing clean lines in there. But those tutorials helped immensly.

[thecrystalrook]

I want to say first that there's nothing wrong with not inking your lineart. Pencil lines have just as much legitimacy as ink lines. They produce a softer look to the work once colored. That being said...

Get yourself a bunch of different pens. Good ones, not paper mate pens you write notes with. Pigma microns, Copic multiliners, a cheap g-pen etc. Try all of them - do some warm up lines - straight lines, wavy lines, sinusoids, circles, varying thickness etc. They all take different levels of practice, especially the g-pen. So take your time figuring out which one makes the kind of lines you like. And really important, make sure to erase over them. Different inks will hold up better to an eraser than others. That's important because you're gonna have to go over any lineart you do with an eraser to clean up pencil lines.

Get yourself some good paper. Printer paper is 20lb text, and isn't really your best option. Get something heavier, like 70lb text, or even better, drawing paper. Deleter manga paper is fantastic. I've never seen paper that handles ink flow better than Deleter.

Finally, take your time - go over your pencil lines slowly and with control. Use your whole arm to make long strokes, and maintain pressure with your wrist.

[rajillustration]

I used to do primarily painting because I hated lineart so much, but what helped was 1.) doing a comic that was completely lineart. and 2.) I got a pen stabilizer, LazyNezumi, and so that way I could use photoshop and make better lines. There are stabilization features in most art programs right now, so you don't really need Lazy Nezumi, so check out to see if your program has a way to stabilize that line, becuase the difference is really real.

[goatbat]

just wondering, how big is the tablet you're using? sometimes not having enough physical space to move your arm around makes it a little more stressful than it has to be. try to make sure you use your shoulder/arm so you don't have to do everything with your wrist.

also tbh, i only started liking it after i realized i could just do more increasingly refined sketch layers so i could just trace over them. on non-comic stuff sometimes i have up to 7 sketch layers! makes lineart a lot easier.

[RocketAxxonu]

What I always hated most about inking was how much concentration it took to do it well, and how often lines would shake and/or look worse than the looser sketch.

What's really helped it become more enjoyable for me (and in fact, the part of the process I find myself defaulting back to most often when looking for something to get done) was first experience, justing using a digital tablet enough that my hand eventually got steadier with the pen. (I much, much prefer digital inking to traditional, because traditional takes even more effort and concentration not to make a mistake, and digital is much easier to erase and adjust and move things around later, which makes the part of the process less stressful.)

Second something I've realized more recently; many of my sketches are pretty bad, and this actually makes inking more fun because the final inked version do look significantly cleaner and also just better than the sketch, meaning I feel like I'm making progress. When I feel like the sketch is really good, then the linework will often feel like a step backward. (Though this is something that's come along later, when I had enough practice on familiar characters/objects I didn't need to stick as rigidly to the sketch. For new objects/characters I'm not as used to, I need a better sketch to follow.)

[TheSingularitySeed]

@Fenris
Thank you for the tutorial suggestion.
I'll be sure to check them out.

@thecrystalrook
Thank you for your advice.
I usually draw on printer paper and notebooks so I think practicing with heavier paper is a good idea. Using thin paper was probably a big reason I didn't do traditional inking to begin with because of bleeding.

@rajillustration
I have Lazy Nezumi too!
I like it better than Photoshop's native stabilizer.
I heard Clip Studio is better but I would have to take the time to learn it.

@goatbat
My tablet is actually huge.
I got a Cintiq 24 as a gift and have been adjusting to it. I like it but I use about half the screen because having a wide canvas feels weird to me.
When I did do digital art before I had small tablet where you don't draw directly on the screen.

@RocketAxxonu
Yes I also struggle when the sketch is nice.
I don't want to ruin the sketch which makes the process of lineart less fun but nice sketches usually make my drawings better overall.
Maybe I just need to adjust my workflow.

Thank you for all your opinions.
This forum is so helpful!

[Shanny8]

I do a LOT of my embellishing/breathing life into my work during the inking stage. When I used to work traditionally I was doing it with the pencils, but by the time I reached the inking stage, I'd be almost burned out from trying to recapture that energy...so I started working in non photo blue pencil, not working that detailed during my pencil stage, and doing all the actual work during the inking stage- I've carried that method over to digital.

[TheSingularitySeed]

Thank you for your input.
I think I'm going to combine my refining and lineart stages based on this thread.
Hopefully that will make the process more fun for me.

[system]

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