How To Draw Thick Line Work

Line quality is an essential aspect to creating engaging line art. In this tutorial by manga artist Jose Fernandez, learn simple yet effective tips to amend your lines in your artwork.

Line quality is one of the most important aspects of manga and comic storytelling, but often forgotten about. Making your manga read clearly is crucial. It can mean having someone go on reading or quickly walking away. Whoever is reading your manga, they should be able to grasp what'southward going on instantly, specially since the majority of the readers volition look at the panel for just a few seconds.

And so, if we can improve clarity with simply line quality, why not! Let me show you lot how you can improve your lines to help tell an engaging story.

In this tutorial, I volition exist using the Thou-pen castor that comes stock with Clip Studio Paint. You can utilize other brushes, but if possible, utilize one where yous can vary the size with pressure sensitivity. I am also working on a canvas at 600 dpi.

Step 1

Determine your bespeak of focus and the different layers of your composition, like your foreground, centre ground and background, as each of these aspects volition differ in line thickness.

Pace 2

Begin inking your foreground characters and objects. Since the foreground is the closest to the reader, nosotros want the outlines to be bolder and thicker! Subconsciously, the reader will think the thicker outlines are closer, and the thinner lines to be further abroad.

Try and keep the lines within the outline thinner also. The outline of the character is sometimes called holding lines, because they literally hold the characters and objects details together, giving information technology more than solidity and making it easier to read.

Pace 3

Once you're done inking the foreground, y'all can offset inking the middle ground. What we take to continue in mind at present, is to make the lines of the eye footing thinner than the foregrounds. This gives the illusion of depth and atmospheric perspective. It also separates the foreground and heart ground. The reader volition be able to distinguish that the closest graphic symbol is in a unlike airplane than the group of guys behind him.

Step 4

When you're done with the middle ground, you lot can kickoff inking the background, and the same dominion applies. Thinner lines the further people and objects are. But! Y'all tin can also make exceptions… for instance, in this illustration I want to bring attention to the young woman in the groundwork shouting. So, I will make her outline but a flake thicker than the other people and objects around her. Not too thick though, as we still desire to keep her in the background.

Step 5

One thing you want to keep in listen, in order to keep your characters and work more conceivable, is to call up your light source direction.

I take the light source located in the upper left of the scene, so I make sure to make the outline thicker on that the areas that wouldn't get hit with light as much. This gives the illusion of shadow and helps give objects more volume. Take for instance the tentacles of this beautiful octopus. I take thicker lines on the underside of the tentacles, and lighter lines on the top.

Stride 6

Subsequently you're mostly washed inking, you can start filling in the blacks.

Step 7

Look over your illustration and adjust your line weights accordingly. A lot of times I find myself jumping effectually a piece and may not think to thicken some of the lines. For example, the chief character of this shot, in the foreground, I thickened upward the lines to make him pop a fleck more than, and really divide him.

Concluding pace

Now information technology'south time to clean upward, look over everything and clean lines that shouldn't be intersecting or are just not supposed to be there.

That's all for that illustration, but here are some quick tips earlier we wrap this upwards.

Tip #1

Every artist has their ain style, that goes for inking fashion as well. Here are some examples of inking styles.

Tip #ii

You tin can describe a brilliant lite hit an object or person by breaking upwardly the outline.

Tip #three

Keep your strokes quick and confident, this is how to tin can reach a smoother and cleaner line. A lot of us will have a slight shake or wobble to our mitt when drawing a line slowly, and we want to avoid those wobbly lines!

Tip #4

Don't be afraid to go over lines again to get the expect you lot desire, not all lines need to be done in i stroke.

Tip #5

Thicken upward lines in pocket-size crevices of folds, cracks, or even areas similar under the mentum, to create more depth and make the art more 3D! These thick lines or areas filled in volition usually exist in areas getting piddling to no low-cal.

Tip #6

Make areas of your drawing stick out more than by adding sharp edges to your lines or by making the line gradually go from thick to thin in the direction of the light source. This can give the illusion of something bulging out.

Conclusion

Thanks for taking the fourth dimension to read this tutorial, I hope this helps you ink your manga or comic more effectively. Y'all can at present meet, how only the outline can help tell your story more clearly, and how you can utilize certain tricks to straight the readers eyes.

Nigh the Creative person

My name is Jose Fernandez, I take washed work in varying kinds of media, but ultimately I consider myself a storyteller. I have storyboarded for animation as well as commercials. I did illustrations for the creator owned manga Contrivance as well equally an indie comic called The Threat. I too did all of the illustrations for the game Heist. In the end, my favorite thing is to tell engaging stories in the most creative means. If you'd like to go far contact, Instagram is the perfect place! I also mail service all my latest works there, so follow for more content.

world wide web.instagram.com/josesartcave