Thoughts on Line Art

     If you've ever attended one of my Beginning Drawing Classes, you know how hyped up I get about line quality. It's often the difference between amateur and professional looking drawings. Why? Because just like shadowing can imply volume and light, so can line.
     The first thing I have students do in my classes is draw eggs – with line. The line is thinner where the light hits and thicker where shadow will fall.
     The master of good line quality was Charles Shulz - yup, of Peanuts fame. I spent over six years drawing Charlie Brown and Snoopy for a children's clothing company. To mimic his line quality, we'd draw two shaky lines side by side and fill them in. It wasn't easy to do. And when you look at his work closely, you'll see what I mean.
     It's something I try to stress when I create my coloring pages - variation of line. It's important and it creates . . . a sense of quality to a drawing. No way around it.
     Just as I stress getting the color and light correct in your work (read my article, "Illuminating Color"), line is important too.
     So, Loreen Leedy from my Picture Book Artists board turned me onto this fantastic TUTORIAL (click the image) by Bob Ostrom of how he achieves his line quality. I highly suggest reading it if this is something you struggle with.
     And while I don't use the blue or red pencils for sketching, or use Illustrator like he does, his method is very similar to how I create the coloring pages for y'all every week.
     1. Pencil sketch by hand, usually while watching TV with hubbie in the evening.
     2. Scan it into my computer the next day.
     3. Recreate the drawing on a separate layer (sometimes many layers) using my Wacom tablet in Photoshop - so I can get that yummy variation of line.
(Here's a before and after example.)
      And Voila! Groovy, eh?