I'm practicing lining right now. I'm not really sure what a good and quick way to do this is. The method I use leaves a film of 'grain' texture that is see through on the areas that should have been deleted...

Any tips? Methods? to share?

I don't know if this will help . . . like at all, but here's my method- and it is kind of primitive & long-way-around, but it has (with a few exceptions) pretty much always produced for me clean, precise line arts.

I use an old method I learned in one of my junior high art classes referred to (or at least it was back 20 years ago when I was in 7th grade O_O) as transfer. The idea is that you do your sketch work on a piece of tracing paper and when you have the version you want, flip the page and trace the backwards image (remember to be as precise as possible when doing this, as the pressure you're going to be applying in the next step can cause any accidental pencil marks to transfer, as well). Next would be sticking that on a clean sheet of whatever paper you use normally for your line arts and retrace it again (preferably with a pen, or a regular wooden pencil as you can press harder with them than a mechanical pencil). When you remove the sheet of tracing you'll have a light graphite impression of the image on your paper and be able to ink it directly without sketching or erasure marks to sully the lines. From there, either scan the finished line art or (and I've done this in a pinch) snap a pic with a digital camera and upload it.

From there you can use pretty much any type of art program to enhance/darken the lines further, which will also bring out any imperfections you didn't notice and allow you to remove them.

Of course, this is possibly also why it takes me a day (sometimes longer) to finish a line art and probably completely useless to you if you're someone that does their work completely on the computer. <_< I couldn't draw with a mouse if my life depended on it.

Very interesting, but yes, I do most of my art digitally, except for the original sketch. I'm not trained so I don't know the way that people are taught in classes. I just doodle with a lead pencil. Then I scan the art and try to get rid of the bg while keeping the lines. After that I try to color the pictures, but I find that there are always a film of what looks like the texture of my paper still on the layer with my lines...so I think the way I'm getting the lines out is missing something.

This is a link to a tutorial that was very helpful to me. Maybe it can help you as well.

black-ravyn.deviantart.com/art/Anti-Guide-Colouring-64285399

There is a part there that says to change only the little gray marker in the middle, but I move the white one around too, because it takes out more of the clean up work. But that's just me. Anyway, this is the fastest way I know of to accomplish lines. Hope it's helpful!

linearts by r0o

*puts on teacher hat* this is how r0o does it:

1. make arts on paper, usually using either non-photo blue, teacher's red checking pencil, or papermate's random purple teacher's checking pencil so that they look like this: www.dokuga.com/images/gallery/originals/tutorials_15/wildlines_005_20100910_1406396669.jpg
2. take either a mechanical pencil or a pen of some kind (i use prismacolor art liners, in assorted sizes range from .005 - brush/cut sizes, and line where you want it to actually SHOW:
3. Scan it on to your puter.
4. Open in your own program. (r0o uses PS so i can only advice on how to use that.)
5. Now, as you can see its blue @_@ we dont want to see blue lines so go to channels:

6. from here, I usually copy this layer, then open up a new file,:
7. hit ctrl V to paste the image, and you should see the same thing you just copied only now its in RedGreenBlue = RGB then gray. at this point you then go into image>adjustments>Levels and tweaks around til you get something like this:

8. once you hit okay, then you've got yourself a lineart! at least this is how i fuss about doing it. hope this helps! ~r0o

**corrected should be easier to understand now =x

holy wow-ness.

Do you sketch the blue by hand? then scan to darken...then print it? or something..? AM I MISSING SOMeTHING? @.@

btw thanks, the tutorial is really informative XD

Wow, okay- I have been at this site too long already. I'm reading through your tutorial r0o and stopped dead in the middle, scrolled back up and went "my, that's an interesting way Sessh is holding his sword." >_>..... yes, let's gloss over that it made me totally lose the point of the thread for a sec.

Naomi wrote:
holy wow-ness.

Do you sketch the blue by hand? then scan to darken...then print it? or something..? AM I MISSING SOMeTHING? @.@

btw thanks, the tutorial is really informative XD in the original scan up, the blue lines are all that are sketched, in the part 2 of that 'tut' i made it darker so you could actually SEE what the blue lines were. its sketched with "none-photo-blue" pencil which does not show up well on scanned work. it actually comes out really REALLY 'light' and thus makes it easier to work over it. there's no need to darken anything... :3

but yus i drew it all by hand before i ever brought it to the puter.


Freya Ishtar wrote:
Wow, okay- I have been at this site too long already. I'm reading through your tutorial r0o and stopped dead in the middle, scrolled back up and went "my, that's an interesting way Sessh is holding his sword." >_>..... yes, let's gloss over that it made me totally lose the point of the thread for a sec. ha! yanno, was NOT intentional when iwas drawing it. its actually PG13art that kinda has unintentional innuendo in it... 0 ;3 *wiggles halo furiously*

Lol. It's all good- put a smile on my face after a crappy day. And I don't think any of our halos are too secure around here.... or lacking for tarnish.

hahahaha my halo's not tarnished.. but it wont light up for some reason.,.. i think... new batteries are in order.

anyway this was the end result of the odd sword placement randomness:

Mine certainly is tarnished . . . I just spent the entire afternoon & evening chasing children out of my room so I can get through writing the citric content of my next chapter. <_< soooo awkward trying to write one of 'those' scenes when you're being 'mom-ed' literally every 5 to 10 minutes. Halo nearly slipped off entirely at one point.

lol... "mom. mom. mom. mom. AH SHOE!!! DUCK!! Mom? O_o"

LMAO! I've never thrown anything more harmful than a pillow or stuffed animal at my children- but that does remind me of one of the singing coaches when I was a kid- everytime she thought we weren't paying attention 'WHAM' shoes would get hurled. And my mother-in-law . . . my husband has regaled me with many a story of being nailed in the temple with a slipper/sandal. That woman has the worst eyesight in the world- can still ricochet objects off of walls with pin-point lethality O_o.

I was getting so frustrated I nearly burst into tears- it was just one of those days when you try just about everything to keep them occupied and it's just NOT working, but if you weren't trying to focus on something, you wouldn't hear a peep out of them. -_-

I see.....I went on youtube and a lot of people actually use the pen tool to do their lines.....GOING BACK NOWWW TO YOUTUUUBEE

Can't help too much as I do my lines all freehand but I can impart some tips

1) Draw BIG - like at least 3000px big. When you resize, even messy lines look neat.
2) Don't keep bad strokes - ctrl+Z is your friend
3) Use fast, shortish strokes

Hope this helps

This is how I do digital lineart!

I first start with a rough sketch either in Photoshop or on paper. If it's in Photoshop, I like to use a light color that is not gray. It just makes life easier later on.


Then I make a new layer and draw in the final lines in black over it. Most of the time I actually do the black lines in Corel Painter 11, just because they come out so much nicer than they do in Photoshop. (My computer was really not a fan of the file that I had saved of what this looks like, you you all get a screenshot, meaning the quality stinks. )


And finally I delete the rough sketch and then I have clean, beautiful lineart. (This is obviously not done yet, but if I don't post this now, chances are I'll forget until it's too late.)


I hope this is helpful!

XD Nifty tips. I draw on cartridge paper. I use a HB pencil to do the outline of the drawing lightly, so I don't smudge the paper. I refine the details with a harder leaded H pencil (it doesn't flake or leave smudges like an HB). I use a tissue under my palm to prevent smudging with the pencil lead.

I used to refine outlines with a 2B pencil, but the drawings came out really smudged and dirty, so I switched to using a permanent, waterproof ink pen of around 0.5 mm thickness, but I found the lines are too thick to give a neat outline. I've recently switched to using the 0.5 mm nib, along with a thinner 0.1 nib, and the thinner gives nicer variation in line thicknesses.

I use a flatbed scanner after that, and scan in plain black and white, using the 'text scan' option to minimize the transfer of smudges left from the pencil on the paper. I scan around 600 DPI (my scanner won't go for a higher resolution), and I can get a reasonably good, and clean image in photoshop. I use the Gaussian blur, and multiply layer options to darker the scanned picture, and it gives a good crisp line, and whitens the blank areas, making it cleaner.

I colour after that using airbrushing, layers, and adding shadows, and highlights last.

~ Pyre

I don't have much experience with digital art... *shamefully hides my fanart section* ><;; but I draw on paper, take a digital picture of it with a camera, upload it, create a new layer, then trace it over on PhotoShop with the pencil tool on a tablet. When I'm done tracing it, I delete the original layer.

As a sidenote, I'm loving all the tutorials I'm getting on linearts. I really do want to practice and improve on it, so all this will definitely help me out a lot. =)