Using a tablet or pad to draw on a screen is very different from drawing with a pen and pencil, but it is still art. When drawing digitally there are alot of hacks and tools to use to enhance your art like the layer option or cropping and moving sections you want to adjust, and in this post i will share my tips on good line art on a tablet. I personally use Sketchbook Pro because thats what I used many years ago but after the update i think i’m going to review other drawing apps and figure out which one I really love so stay tuned for a post about that.
The first thing to doing good lineart is to have a good basic sketch of what you’re doing. In this post I have used one of my own drawings to describe the process of lineart and how I make it look definite and smooth.
When you start to do line art remember to create a new layer over your sketch layer so you are drawing on an empty layer that overlaps the sketch. Then you will want to lower the opacity of the sketch layer so it is less noticeable. When doing line art digitally you don’t want to use any painting brushes because those will appear blurry on the edge and the piece won’t look finished. I use the Pen option to create clear differences in the artwork and separate objects in the piece like the collar or the dress of the featured image. Or the lines in the stone on this next image.
Starting your lineart is easy, you can use black or any other dark color to create the base lines for your art. The lineart is important because it makes the shape of your design pop and you can start at any point on your design.
In my art print I started the lineart on her face and worked up to the head and down the body. I start with the smaller details in the face, lightly putting pressure and slowly adding more to create a line that is small to large. You could also adjust the pen size in the tools option for the same effect.
A good tip to good line work is to have strong, confident lines. You can zoom in to make it straighter or you can use the Line tool in the top options menu, but I like to freehand the line art so it flows better.Decide where the light perspective is and draw thicker lines to represent where the shadows are and thinner lines to show where it’s lighter. I have short reels on tiktok about this.
That’s all there is to line art, it’s all about being confident in where you are putting the lines and the thickness of the lines. Thank you all for taking the time to read my post and if you want more informational art posts or art lifestyle posts you can subscribe to my email list on the home page here. If you wanna see or buy my art you can browse through my design options on InPrint and have it printed on whatever you like here or stay updated on release of new art here.