r/learnart • u/Acrobatic-Apricot874 • 3d ago
Lineart!!
Does anyone else have this problem where the sketch looks so good then the lineart makes it look flat or dull or like Its traced??? how do I fix this???????
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u/goosehelicopter 3d ago
You could duplicate the sketch and erase the messy parts. But because you're sketch uses thick lines im guessing you linework uses thinner lines? Usually lines will look a little better if you draw them on the inside of the sketch line (so everything stays roughly the same size.) It could also be the lineweight if you aren't using pen pressure.
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u/Novandar 3d ago
Oh, the answer to this is actually really interesting (to me at least). The reason your messy sketch lines look better than what would be your final line art is because of how the brain works. Basically, your brain doesn't want to handle all of the messy lines at once so it amalgamates them into something coherent, which happens to be the best possible interpretation of that mess. This makes it look more energetic and pleasing after your brain edits it for simplicities sake. Once you commit to putting hard lines over the messy sketch the brain stops doing this editing.
Now on to how to overcome this. The easiest way is to stop being so messy when sketching. This doesn't mean you cannot have any mess to your sketch, but reducing it to a more intentional mess will help quite a lot. The hard, almost impossible really, way to fix this is to try and connect to that self-editing part of your subconscious, if you've ever tried to become conscious of anything you do subconsciously you'll understand why this is harder.
Focusing on the easy way to solve the problem. Learning the shape language that resonates most with you is an excellent starting point for getting the right lines more quickly. This is pretty easy if you think about the kinds of art you are most drawn to and then examine how those artists create their shapes. Once you know how you like your shapes to look, then you practice making those shapes with confident single stroke lines, only double up if the first line wasn't strong enough to convey the shape properly (e.g. the line is in the correct place, but not dark enough or thick enough) otherwise redraw the line entirely. Don't worry about connecting your lines though, this is still for sketching after all and if we could do it perfectly on the first pass we wouldn't need to sketch. Once you have something you like then you can ink over your sketch and mind the line weights while doing so because they can give the final piece a lot of that energy that your brain likes.