Tutorial 66 - Line Quality

Quality of line is so important, it can really make or break a drawing. 

It's something that will eventually develop if you draw for long enough. 

There are many different ways to use line in your work and the way you control your lines will be a defining factor to your natural style. 

When we get inspired by other artists we are often seduced by the finesse of their line work. Lines appear to hold a lot of energy and express all sorts of symbolic meaning. We'll talk about that in another tutorial. For now, if you feel you have a weakness in your line work then you only need to practice and experiment. 

Line quality is less important when sketching and planning an artwork. The sketch serves as a guide, which is important especially when trying to draw precise curves. Straight lines are much easier and require only a starting and ending point. Ghosting or hovering over the path before you execute a line is a technique you should try to adopt early on in drawing.

A common problem we run in to are feelings of frustration when a line doesn't seem to come out the way we want it to. This can be due to a number of factors.

We will find that drawing lines in certain directions is much easier than drawing lines in other directions. The quick way around this is to rotate the canvas or page but that does nothing for our muscle memory, which is what we really need to develop to be able to draw a variety of lines well. Be sure to try has hard as possible to develop your ability to draw lines in multiple directions. 

Something that I personally find frustrating is how difficult it is to draw 'perfect' lines in digital media. The hardware seems to be so sensitive to every imperfection, appearing to almost exaggerate your mistakes. Be sure to spend a good amount of time on traditional media, developing your technique with both traditional and digital media might be something you want to do. You might find that making precise final lines is easier in one medium than in the other.