Line Art Tutorial
Okay, so first off, I don’t care how well you can draw. You can be the best of the best, but if you can’t line you’re screwed. I’ve seen some amazing penciled drawings butchered because the artist decided they knew how to ink. No. Bad. Stay away from those penciled copies unless you know what you’re doing. >_<
So… instead of beating you up, I shall poke and prod at you until you learn properly. And to be clear, you can be a crappy pencilist/artist in general and still do well at this type of lining. This isn’t about creativity; this is about hard work and attention to detail. And yes, I stress hard work. Lining well is tedious, and time consuming, but that’s what reaching that next level is all about. We aren’t all born as amazing artists, and the ones that improved while others didn’t, weren’t just about having some talent. Talent can only take you so far; at some point you need to step up and realize that you’re going to have to work at it. You’re going to struggle, and fail, and pull your hair out in frustration until *finally* you can look at your art and not hate it. If it were easy, everyone would be an artist (and seeing as that everyone these days seems to be a graphic artist, you have to wonder just how good they are at it. >_>)
Okay, so what I’m going over today will be a basic outline/lining tutorial. I say this because we’re not using lines as a form of *tone* to create shadows and surface color, but just rendering the elements of a figure to portray it best in simple lines. I’m doing this as a digital lining, because that’s the medium I’ve been using recently, and it’s easy to show detail with it. Digital lining takes longer than traditional pen on paper because 1) the details and 2) as smooth as tablet drawing can be, the pen tends to shake when zoomed out too far, so you’re stuck working zoomed in with large lines and a lot of moving the page and jazz to get to everything. But, even though it does take longer, you do get more detail work in there, and you have the added benefit of fixing mistakes in a jiff. The techniques you learn in this tutorial can be used with normal traditional pen and ink, just realize that adding white is not as simple when on paper.
And for you mouse users: It can be done! It’s a little longer, but you can line without a pressure sensitive drawing tablet. So no excuses of I only have a mouse, got it? XD
Alright, so first thing first, you need a sketch/scan/something ready to be inked on your workspace. I’m not going into how to draw, or how to scan, or how to open up things in photoshop, etc. There are plenty of tutorials out there for that shit. Get your thing you need inked on your workspace and resize it to a nice large size (that won’t kill your computer.) I like mine around 6000 pixels width unless the details are crazy and I’ll go larger. I ink large because the pen does jump a bit, but when scaled down it’s all smooth. And, I love mad detail. >_> So, here’s my scan.
I pulled out this old sketch that was to be the companion piece to my Water Angel I’d drawn a while back. I chose this because I could go over things like mad detail on hair, without having to go into mad detail on clothes and wrinkles and jazz. I could of, but I’m lazy and have other things to get to besides this.
So, we have your soon to be inked piece up. After resizing, fiddle with the opacity so that the pencil lines are fairly light. Then open up a new layer above it for your first layer of inking. Dear gods, this is so important: DO NOT INK ON YOUR SCAN/SKETCH LAYER!!! And yes, I said first layer. Depending on the clarity of your penciled scan piece, you may have to go through a few different drafts until you come up with a suitable line art. I was pretty clear with this scan, including details on hands (something I tend to leave out until inking) so I didn’t expect to go through drafts to perfect the first layer.
So, I’m using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for my drawing software. My brush is set at 12px and is one of the default hard round brushes. I use the Brush tool (just hit b while Photoshop is open and that’s the tool I’m talking about), not the line tool, or anything fancy like filters, fiddling, whatever the fuck (mostly because I don’t understand it.) I keep my tools simple. I am using a tablet, and the pressure is on so that the line width will grow or decrease depending on how hard I press down on the tablet. This makes everything easier, but like I said, you can do this without a tablet, using a plain old mouse. The opacity of the brush is set at 100%, and that’s how I want it to stay. This isn’t penciling; you want your ink to be dark and consistent.
So, I start with the face. If I’d had to fix the scan up, I would have done a quick layer fixing proportions and such, and then set the opacity low to use those as guidelines, but I’m happy with the scan, so I go right into inking. The first layer of ink is the easiest. I keep my lines light (as in thin) and uniform for the most part, switching occasionally from different views of the picture to make sure that things are coming out how they should be. Basically the first part of the inking process is to get the gist of the scan/sketch with clean, clear lines.
Face without scan lines
I do the body lines first, and keep them on their own separate layer.
Body without scan lines.
Once the body lines are finished, I start a new layer above them, and start on the hair. Why a new layer? Because hair is complicated, and a lot of the time it ends up blowing in the face.
Hair without scan lines
To make sure that things are how they should be, draw the hair so you can see all the important stuff underneath it, and then much later on go in and erase the parts blocked by the hair. I work from the front to the back with hair. I don’t start with an outline of the whole of the hair, because hair is not a helmet. It is light and soft, and moves as individual strands. In the scan below the new lines, you can see how the skull is still drawn in. When I sketch I make sure that all the important lines are there, including skull shape. I dress my figures, as in, I will sketch their full form, then draw the hair in, and then the clothes, and whatever other articles are added. That way you know that no matter what you add onto the character, the form will be correct, because it was correct from the very beginning.
Now, here’s the hair completed, down to her back. If you notice a change in the original bangs, it’s because I was stupid and lost that new layer by closing the window without remembering to save. Which brings me to an important point: Save A Lot! Especially if you have the crappy computer that crashes on you. I have cats that like to step on the keyboard >_> so saving is good. Lining is a lot of work; so don’t lose it just because you forgot to hit Ctrl+S once in a while.
Also, note the flow of the hair. Even though the style calls for a spiky sort of hair type, it still flows in movement and is weighed by gravity. Know how to make long, light curves, because that’s what movement in hair is about. If you have to redo it a few times, then do it. This is about great line art, not lazy, half-assed stuff. And another thing, although hair flows in the same direction, try to keep parallel lines to a minimum. A repetition of lines and shapes draws and catches the viewers eye-fine for stylized work, but not good when you’re trying to keep something looking breezy. You’ll notice later on that the repeat I had in the hair lines by her neck on the side of her visible ear will later be changed to get rid of the pattern of triangles I inadvertently made. You’ll eventually get a feel for these sort of things, but in the beginning (like everything) it will be difficult for a lot of you.
Alright, so the hair is done, and we need another layer. A layer for Body lines, a layer for Hair, and a layer for (in this case) the collar, wings and tail-all the other extra stuff. Body lines keep its own layer because it essential. I know parts of it will be covered later, but until I let that happen I need to know that those lines are correct. Same with the hair. Not to worry, these layers will eventually be flattened. But if you have the memory for it on your computer, then keep the layers separated for now.
So, the collar first. And this is dressing the character. XD You need the collar to wrap around the character. And in the same way, that piece of metal needs to wrap around the collar. Don’t think of lines as just plain old lines. They wrap around a figure, they move, they’re blown, they bend, they break. Lines are visual poetry if you use them right. And if you don’t, your picture ends up looking chunky and stiff, and you’re left wondering why.
So now I’m putting in the white, just to clean up the current lines I’m making. I kill the visibility of the scan for this, because I need to be sure I’m whiting out the right lines. Be careful when doing this, because at this point lines aren’t defined clearly, and you may end up whiting out the wrong ones.
Here’s more dressing of the character. I’ve inked the band on her wrist, sure to wrap around her arm. I fiddled with the opacity a bit so you can see where the original lines were, and what I did to make the band look like something she’s wearing, instead of something that is a part of her arm. If you don’t get things to wrap properly around your character, then you’re inadvertently changing the shape of your character’s form.
Next I inked in the tail. When I’m drawing the bottom part of a demon tail, I’m strongly reminded of the way a leaf curls. They both had a center vein, and symmetrical sides. Also note that before I added white, the tail was drawn in a way so that I could see the form behind it.
White is added, along with her tattoo. Notice that even with something so trivial, the design follows the curves of her body, it doesn’t create its own path and distort it.
Water is added, loose and full of motion.
And the wings are inked in. At this point, your first layer of inking is done. Double check that your whites are where they belong, nothing is out of place, and merge your Body, Hair, and Extra layers so that you’re left with two layers: your original scan, and your current layer. Now, if you feel like you can delete your scan layer, you’re welcome to it, although sometimes I leave notes, and information on my scan, or even just use it for reference to remind me of something. But I don’t look at it beyond reference at this point because the scan is not important. Your first layer of line art and the layer you’re going to be making next are the picture; the scan is ancient history. As much as you may have liked how things were in that original sketch, this is about making something beyond that, so in that spirit you need to let the scan go. Go on… let it go. There you go. <3
What comes next is tedious, anal, and may leave you to the point of tears. Why? Because every single line you just made you have to go over again. Every single one. Not half, not only the ones on the hair; every single one. This is the deciding factor, peeps. You can have a mediocre line art, or you can put some mind-numbing work into it, and create something amazing. Don’t come crying to me because you’re no willing to go the extra distance.
So first, a quick explanation on what detailed line art can do for a drawing.
We have three different versions of the same picture. What makes it different? Why the inking, my friends. With the proper placed ink and white, you can transform a picture from dull to dynamic. And if you’re paying attention, you can get effects that other people only get once they’re coloring, and that effect is depth. A has a shadow around the bottom edges, and has white near the top to create the look that the tattoo is raised out on the skin. B has the shadow on the inside of the design, with a consistency to make it look like the tattoo has been cut into her flesh. And C, although simple in the fact that it has no depth, is far more eye catching then the little sketch it originated from. With the simple addition of black and white (i.e. the color of your ink and your canvas color) you can go from drab to fab! XD
So, since we’re using the same two colors through the whole picture, if you do use photoshop, and don’t know about the little quick-key feature where all you do is hit X to switch your foreground and background colors, I suggest you give it a whirl. If you’re in Painter you hit Shift+X (I’m pretty sure it’s shift… it’s one of those…) Have your ink color and your canvas color set up, and be prepared to be jumping from one to the other, because now it’s time for detailing and sculpting your lines.
I used a larger brush for this part, 15px, and that’s it. You can even use the same size brush if you like, but I was going for a slightly more dramatic look than what I normally do. Nothing fancy though, just attention to detail. Now, this technique will eventually come naturally to you, but I’ll try to point out the little tricks that I’ve found to help you along.
So, we’re back at the face again. Now throughout the whole thing I’m going to be coming back up here and tweaking things, but right off you can see an immediate change in the way I’ve attacked her jaw line. Indents have a thicker line, swells of flesh like her cheekbones keep thin lines, and if it calls for it, you can break the line with some white at those points to give it even more depth.
Already while inking her face, I’ve noticed problems in her eye location and expression. Those eyes will slowly be moving into their proper locations as the picture progresses (so don’t be alarmed. ^^; ) So look at all those dark lines! The inside of her ear, beneath her chin, the space between her neck and her collar! Here’s the deal. Things in shadow are going to have thicker lines. And when you have thicker lines, depending on where they’re located, the white areas around it are going to pop accordingly. Like the A, B, C figure, depending on where you put those darks, your form will change. We want that darkness under her chin because it not only creates depth, but also makes you look to her face. We want the darkness around her collar because it not only pushes that part of the collar back, but also pulls her neck closer. We want the darker lines of hair around her ear, because that pushes those strand of hair behind the ear.
Her horns have been inked here. Notice that where the lines meet on her horns, the lines grow thicker. That’s to help create a feeling of depth. Notice the lines behind the horns are thicker as well, while the hair lines in front of the horns are being pushed forward by the thicker lines they have resting on the horns. The shadows push the light forward. Indents have thicker lines, and swells have thinner lines. Because of this, that big mass of hair has now become individual pieces of hair, some receding, some coming forward depending on the shadows.
More hair, and if you haven’t noticed before, look at the shadows around the bottom of the collar, and the way her form is more defined because of it. It not only pops the collar forward, but gives her more shape than what a simple line art could do.
This is to show the complete change done in her shoulder. The original line art was not putting the proper perspective onto her arm. I don’t want to go into a speal on foreshortening, you can learn how to draw elsewhere, but in the eyes of inking, when you want something to recede the lines grow darker, and the white mass in front of it feels pushed forward. So when face with foreshortening, you use that to your advantage.
Body lines are adjusted and inked. Suddenly the breasts are no longer just lines, but flesh with weight to them. This sort of effect is not only about understanding inking, but also understanding shape, form, and shadows. Yes, you can ink anything, but without the understanding of what you’re inking and how shadows effect form, you won’t know where to put those darks and lights. Practice, practice, and don’t be discouraged. Notice the shadow around the string. It’s inked in a way that the lines create long cylinder string, instead of a flat narrow piece of fabric, or whatever type you choose. By knowing form, and inking accordingly, you transform the lines into shapes.
Wings. XD Wings are fun, but trouble some because you can lean towards a repletion of shapes and patterns if you’re not careful, like with hair. The best way to fix this is to go in with white and break up some of those long lines of bone/cartilage that forms the skeleton of the wing, and in other places ink for style, if not depth. Two unadorned lines side by side looks dull, but with a little detail of ink you can change that. Also, not how where her arm meets the wing, the lines are thick. That pushes the wing behind her arm.
Okay, why spend a whole view on water? Because of the nature of it. Water may be clear, but when inking you need to give it depth, and weight. The indents are inked heavily, while white is added a lot to the swells. Also note the flirty nature of the waterspout. It’s not just a splash of water; it’s jumping, and flowing, and teasing. There’s life to it beyond water, and it’s details like that that will make a picture come to life.
Alright, this has a few things. First off, you may be wondering how I fixed her hand. It was larger before, and although I’m not going into a huge Photoshop tutorial here (because I’m the last person in the world qualified for something like that, I will tell you what I did.) Before I inked the details I did a copy and paste of the hand from the first layer of line art. I then went to Edit-Transform-Scale on that layer of the hand. I made sure the little button up on the toolbar was clicked (it looks like a link of chain in between the width and the height. If you hover over it it will say maintain aspect ratio.) I clicked that, and then scaled the hand down a bit till I was happy. Erased the original, poorly sized hand, and then inked it on my detail ink layer. This is why I love computers. XD Any other medium and I’d be redrawing the damn thing.
Also, you’ll notice I added a bit more onto her pendant. I dunno, with just the stone it felt like it was too light for the way it was swinging, so I was hoping the extra items would make it appear more sound.
Look at that thick, tangible water. Just a few heavy lines with the right amount of depth and movement, and she’s suddenly standing in water. Shadows around the tail to pull it away from the body, and notice how although well adorned, the tattoos have no odd depth to them.
Now once I run over everything with dark, I pull back and start looking for where I need more white to break up repetition and make things sparkle, then finally I go into any greater detail.
Here I added water to the tail.
And here I’ve added details to the hair and collar, creating a shiny effect to both. To reiterate, with things like hair, and lines that are repeated again, add white to break it up. It makes the areas lighter (in a literal, and atmospheric sense.)
And now we’re done with lining.
You’ll notice heavier shadows were added to her lower torso to help combat the weight of her hair and upper body. It’s always good to zoom out and look at your picture, even step away for a bit, before you say it’s done. Balance, compositionally, as well with your lining is important, and sometimes just a few tweaks of light and dark are all you need.
And remember, it’s not a fast process, but neither is improving as an artist. If you want to get good then you need to have patience and be willing to put the work into it. Mouse users, you can achieve this with a bit more work than us lucky tablet owners. I've tried it; it's not quick, but it works. And yeah, these are the basic steps if you want to approach this traditionally. It's a lot faster, but like I said, results vary when it comes to adding white. I’m going to go take a nap and then finish up my commission. :/ If any of you have questions you can ask below and I’ll get to them eventually.
So… instead of beating you up, I shall poke and prod at you until you learn properly. And to be clear, you can be a crappy pencilist/artist in general and still do well at this type of lining. This isn’t about creativity; this is about hard work and attention to detail. And yes, I stress hard work. Lining well is tedious, and time consuming, but that’s what reaching that next level is all about. We aren’t all born as amazing artists, and the ones that improved while others didn’t, weren’t just about having some talent. Talent can only take you so far; at some point you need to step up and realize that you’re going to have to work at it. You’re going to struggle, and fail, and pull your hair out in frustration until *finally* you can look at your art and not hate it. If it were easy, everyone would be an artist (and seeing as that everyone these days seems to be a graphic artist, you have to wonder just how good they are at it. >_>)
Okay, so what I’m going over today will be a basic outline/lining tutorial. I say this because we’re not using lines as a form of *tone* to create shadows and surface color, but just rendering the elements of a figure to portray it best in simple lines. I’m doing this as a digital lining, because that’s the medium I’ve been using recently, and it’s easy to show detail with it. Digital lining takes longer than traditional pen on paper because 1) the details and 2) as smooth as tablet drawing can be, the pen tends to shake when zoomed out too far, so you’re stuck working zoomed in with large lines and a lot of moving the page and jazz to get to everything. But, even though it does take longer, you do get more detail work in there, and you have the added benefit of fixing mistakes in a jiff. The techniques you learn in this tutorial can be used with normal traditional pen and ink, just realize that adding white is not as simple when on paper.
And for you mouse users: It can be done! It’s a little longer, but you can line without a pressure sensitive drawing tablet. So no excuses of I only have a mouse, got it? XD
Alright, so first thing first, you need a sketch/scan/something ready to be inked on your workspace. I’m not going into how to draw, or how to scan, or how to open up things in photoshop, etc. There are plenty of tutorials out there for that shit. Get your thing you need inked on your workspace and resize it to a nice large size (that won’t kill your computer.) I like mine around 6000 pixels width unless the details are crazy and I’ll go larger. I ink large because the pen does jump a bit, but when scaled down it’s all smooth. And, I love mad detail. >_> So, here’s my scan.
I pulled out this old sketch that was to be the companion piece to my Water Angel I’d drawn a while back. I chose this because I could go over things like mad detail on hair, without having to go into mad detail on clothes and wrinkles and jazz. I could of, but I’m lazy and have other things to get to besides this.
So, we have your soon to be inked piece up. After resizing, fiddle with the opacity so that the pencil lines are fairly light. Then open up a new layer above it for your first layer of inking. Dear gods, this is so important: DO NOT INK ON YOUR SCAN/SKETCH LAYER!!! And yes, I said first layer. Depending on the clarity of your penciled scan piece, you may have to go through a few different drafts until you come up with a suitable line art. I was pretty clear with this scan, including details on hands (something I tend to leave out until inking) so I didn’t expect to go through drafts to perfect the first layer.
So, I’m using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for my drawing software. My brush is set at 12px and is one of the default hard round brushes. I use the Brush tool (just hit b while Photoshop is open and that’s the tool I’m talking about), not the line tool, or anything fancy like filters, fiddling, whatever the fuck (mostly because I don’t understand it.) I keep my tools simple. I am using a tablet, and the pressure is on so that the line width will grow or decrease depending on how hard I press down on the tablet. This makes everything easier, but like I said, you can do this without a tablet, using a plain old mouse. The opacity of the brush is set at 100%, and that’s how I want it to stay. This isn’t penciling; you want your ink to be dark and consistent.
So, I start with the face. If I’d had to fix the scan up, I would have done a quick layer fixing proportions and such, and then set the opacity low to use those as guidelines, but I’m happy with the scan, so I go right into inking. The first layer of ink is the easiest. I keep my lines light (as in thin) and uniform for the most part, switching occasionally from different views of the picture to make sure that things are coming out how they should be. Basically the first part of the inking process is to get the gist of the scan/sketch with clean, clear lines.
Face without scan lines
I do the body lines first, and keep them on their own separate layer.
Body without scan lines.
Once the body lines are finished, I start a new layer above them, and start on the hair. Why a new layer? Because hair is complicated, and a lot of the time it ends up blowing in the face.
Hair without scan lines
To make sure that things are how they should be, draw the hair so you can see all the important stuff underneath it, and then much later on go in and erase the parts blocked by the hair. I work from the front to the back with hair. I don’t start with an outline of the whole of the hair, because hair is not a helmet. It is light and soft, and moves as individual strands. In the scan below the new lines, you can see how the skull is still drawn in. When I sketch I make sure that all the important lines are there, including skull shape. I dress my figures, as in, I will sketch their full form, then draw the hair in, and then the clothes, and whatever other articles are added. That way you know that no matter what you add onto the character, the form will be correct, because it was correct from the very beginning.
Now, here’s the hair completed, down to her back. If you notice a change in the original bangs, it’s because I was stupid and lost that new layer by closing the window without remembering to save. Which brings me to an important point: Save A Lot! Especially if you have the crappy computer that crashes on you. I have cats that like to step on the keyboard >_> so saving is good. Lining is a lot of work; so don’t lose it just because you forgot to hit Ctrl+S once in a while.
Also, note the flow of the hair. Even though the style calls for a spiky sort of hair type, it still flows in movement and is weighed by gravity. Know how to make long, light curves, because that’s what movement in hair is about. If you have to redo it a few times, then do it. This is about great line art, not lazy, half-assed stuff. And another thing, although hair flows in the same direction, try to keep parallel lines to a minimum. A repetition of lines and shapes draws and catches the viewers eye-fine for stylized work, but not good when you’re trying to keep something looking breezy. You’ll notice later on that the repeat I had in the hair lines by her neck on the side of her visible ear will later be changed to get rid of the pattern of triangles I inadvertently made. You’ll eventually get a feel for these sort of things, but in the beginning (like everything) it will be difficult for a lot of you.
Alright, so the hair is done, and we need another layer. A layer for Body lines, a layer for Hair, and a layer for (in this case) the collar, wings and tail-all the other extra stuff. Body lines keep its own layer because it essential. I know parts of it will be covered later, but until I let that happen I need to know that those lines are correct. Same with the hair. Not to worry, these layers will eventually be flattened. But if you have the memory for it on your computer, then keep the layers separated for now.
So, the collar first. And this is dressing the character. XD You need the collar to wrap around the character. And in the same way, that piece of metal needs to wrap around the collar. Don’t think of lines as just plain old lines. They wrap around a figure, they move, they’re blown, they bend, they break. Lines are visual poetry if you use them right. And if you don’t, your picture ends up looking chunky and stiff, and you’re left wondering why.
So now I’m putting in the white, just to clean up the current lines I’m making. I kill the visibility of the scan for this, because I need to be sure I’m whiting out the right lines. Be careful when doing this, because at this point lines aren’t defined clearly, and you may end up whiting out the wrong ones.
Here’s more dressing of the character. I’ve inked the band on her wrist, sure to wrap around her arm. I fiddled with the opacity a bit so you can see where the original lines were, and what I did to make the band look like something she’s wearing, instead of something that is a part of her arm. If you don’t get things to wrap properly around your character, then you’re inadvertently changing the shape of your character’s form.
Next I inked in the tail. When I’m drawing the bottom part of a demon tail, I’m strongly reminded of the way a leaf curls. They both had a center vein, and symmetrical sides. Also note that before I added white, the tail was drawn in a way so that I could see the form behind it.
White is added, along with her tattoo. Notice that even with something so trivial, the design follows the curves of her body, it doesn’t create its own path and distort it.
Water is added, loose and full of motion.
And the wings are inked in. At this point, your first layer of inking is done. Double check that your whites are where they belong, nothing is out of place, and merge your Body, Hair, and Extra layers so that you’re left with two layers: your original scan, and your current layer. Now, if you feel like you can delete your scan layer, you’re welcome to it, although sometimes I leave notes, and information on my scan, or even just use it for reference to remind me of something. But I don’t look at it beyond reference at this point because the scan is not important. Your first layer of line art and the layer you’re going to be making next are the picture; the scan is ancient history. As much as you may have liked how things were in that original sketch, this is about making something beyond that, so in that spirit you need to let the scan go. Go on… let it go. There you go. <3
What comes next is tedious, anal, and may leave you to the point of tears. Why? Because every single line you just made you have to go over again. Every single one. Not half, not only the ones on the hair; every single one. This is the deciding factor, peeps. You can have a mediocre line art, or you can put some mind-numbing work into it, and create something amazing. Don’t come crying to me because you’re no willing to go the extra distance.
So first, a quick explanation on what detailed line art can do for a drawing.
We have three different versions of the same picture. What makes it different? Why the inking, my friends. With the proper placed ink and white, you can transform a picture from dull to dynamic. And if you’re paying attention, you can get effects that other people only get once they’re coloring, and that effect is depth. A has a shadow around the bottom edges, and has white near the top to create the look that the tattoo is raised out on the skin. B has the shadow on the inside of the design, with a consistency to make it look like the tattoo has been cut into her flesh. And C, although simple in the fact that it has no depth, is far more eye catching then the little sketch it originated from. With the simple addition of black and white (i.e. the color of your ink and your canvas color) you can go from drab to fab! XD
So, since we’re using the same two colors through the whole picture, if you do use photoshop, and don’t know about the little quick-key feature where all you do is hit X to switch your foreground and background colors, I suggest you give it a whirl. If you’re in Painter you hit Shift+X (I’m pretty sure it’s shift… it’s one of those…) Have your ink color and your canvas color set up, and be prepared to be jumping from one to the other, because now it’s time for detailing and sculpting your lines.
I used a larger brush for this part, 15px, and that’s it. You can even use the same size brush if you like, but I was going for a slightly more dramatic look than what I normally do. Nothing fancy though, just attention to detail. Now, this technique will eventually come naturally to you, but I’ll try to point out the little tricks that I’ve found to help you along.
So, we’re back at the face again. Now throughout the whole thing I’m going to be coming back up here and tweaking things, but right off you can see an immediate change in the way I’ve attacked her jaw line. Indents have a thicker line, swells of flesh like her cheekbones keep thin lines, and if it calls for it, you can break the line with some white at those points to give it even more depth.
Already while inking her face, I’ve noticed problems in her eye location and expression. Those eyes will slowly be moving into their proper locations as the picture progresses (so don’t be alarmed. ^^; ) So look at all those dark lines! The inside of her ear, beneath her chin, the space between her neck and her collar! Here’s the deal. Things in shadow are going to have thicker lines. And when you have thicker lines, depending on where they’re located, the white areas around it are going to pop accordingly. Like the A, B, C figure, depending on where you put those darks, your form will change. We want that darkness under her chin because it not only creates depth, but also makes you look to her face. We want the darkness around her collar because it not only pushes that part of the collar back, but also pulls her neck closer. We want the darker lines of hair around her ear, because that pushes those strand of hair behind the ear.
Her horns have been inked here. Notice that where the lines meet on her horns, the lines grow thicker. That’s to help create a feeling of depth. Notice the lines behind the horns are thicker as well, while the hair lines in front of the horns are being pushed forward by the thicker lines they have resting on the horns. The shadows push the light forward. Indents have thicker lines, and swells have thinner lines. Because of this, that big mass of hair has now become individual pieces of hair, some receding, some coming forward depending on the shadows.
More hair, and if you haven’t noticed before, look at the shadows around the bottom of the collar, and the way her form is more defined because of it. It not only pops the collar forward, but gives her more shape than what a simple line art could do.
This is to show the complete change done in her shoulder. The original line art was not putting the proper perspective onto her arm. I don’t want to go into a speal on foreshortening, you can learn how to draw elsewhere, but in the eyes of inking, when you want something to recede the lines grow darker, and the white mass in front of it feels pushed forward. So when face with foreshortening, you use that to your advantage.
Body lines are adjusted and inked. Suddenly the breasts are no longer just lines, but flesh with weight to them. This sort of effect is not only about understanding inking, but also understanding shape, form, and shadows. Yes, you can ink anything, but without the understanding of what you’re inking and how shadows effect form, you won’t know where to put those darks and lights. Practice, practice, and don’t be discouraged. Notice the shadow around the string. It’s inked in a way that the lines create long cylinder string, instead of a flat narrow piece of fabric, or whatever type you choose. By knowing form, and inking accordingly, you transform the lines into shapes.
Wings. XD Wings are fun, but trouble some because you can lean towards a repletion of shapes and patterns if you’re not careful, like with hair. The best way to fix this is to go in with white and break up some of those long lines of bone/cartilage that forms the skeleton of the wing, and in other places ink for style, if not depth. Two unadorned lines side by side looks dull, but with a little detail of ink you can change that. Also, not how where her arm meets the wing, the lines are thick. That pushes the wing behind her arm.
Okay, why spend a whole view on water? Because of the nature of it. Water may be clear, but when inking you need to give it depth, and weight. The indents are inked heavily, while white is added a lot to the swells. Also note the flirty nature of the waterspout. It’s not just a splash of water; it’s jumping, and flowing, and teasing. There’s life to it beyond water, and it’s details like that that will make a picture come to life.
Alright, this has a few things. First off, you may be wondering how I fixed her hand. It was larger before, and although I’m not going into a huge Photoshop tutorial here (because I’m the last person in the world qualified for something like that, I will tell you what I did.) Before I inked the details I did a copy and paste of the hand from the first layer of line art. I then went to Edit-Transform-Scale on that layer of the hand. I made sure the little button up on the toolbar was clicked (it looks like a link of chain in between the width and the height. If you hover over it it will say maintain aspect ratio.) I clicked that, and then scaled the hand down a bit till I was happy. Erased the original, poorly sized hand, and then inked it on my detail ink layer. This is why I love computers. XD Any other medium and I’d be redrawing the damn thing.
Also, you’ll notice I added a bit more onto her pendant. I dunno, with just the stone it felt like it was too light for the way it was swinging, so I was hoping the extra items would make it appear more sound.
Look at that thick, tangible water. Just a few heavy lines with the right amount of depth and movement, and she’s suddenly standing in water. Shadows around the tail to pull it away from the body, and notice how although well adorned, the tattoos have no odd depth to them.
Now once I run over everything with dark, I pull back and start looking for where I need more white to break up repetition and make things sparkle, then finally I go into any greater detail.
Here I added water to the tail.
And here I’ve added details to the hair and collar, creating a shiny effect to both. To reiterate, with things like hair, and lines that are repeated again, add white to break it up. It makes the areas lighter (in a literal, and atmospheric sense.)
And now we’re done with lining.
You’ll notice heavier shadows were added to her lower torso to help combat the weight of her hair and upper body. It’s always good to zoom out and look at your picture, even step away for a bit, before you say it’s done. Balance, compositionally, as well with your lining is important, and sometimes just a few tweaks of light and dark are all you need.
And remember, it’s not a fast process, but neither is improving as an artist. If you want to get good then you need to have patience and be willing to put the work into it. Mouse users, you can achieve this with a bit more work than us lucky tablet owners. I've tried it; it's not quick, but it works. And yeah, these are the basic steps if you want to approach this traditionally. It's a lot faster, but like I said, results vary when it comes to adding white. I’m going to go take a nap and then finish up my commission. :/ If any of you have questions you can ask below and I’ll get to them eventually.