Funny you are the first I have seen talk about this, I don't use line art because all the way up to a year ago I was an analog artist so I always used Pencil and just refined my sketch. when I first started getting use to my pen display and drawing programs I watched tutorials to learn how to use them and SO MANY people would sketch then just draw over it in a new layer and make their art look worse, and I couldn't understand why, especially when many times their line art layer ends up looking sterile and stiff, but their sketch was so LIVELY and expressive

Finally SOMEONE said this, I've been doing this for ages but and some people just thought I did it to be lazy. But it adds so much more personality and movement to the art itself.

I always hated doing the lineart and just ignoring it and using a clean sketch instead has majorly improved my art, happy to see other artists talk about this as you often don't realise that you're not limited to a specific technique just because of medium.

I think both drawings are cute. The no line art method is quicker and looks more like a natural drawing, the line art method looks more detailed, but kind of hard to see the lines.

to me the thing that helped with making the linework look good and actually better than the sketch (as opposed to worse), was focusing on line weight.

Remember people, this method is usually only effective for those that sketch using confident smooth lines and not little chicken scratches as some people prefer. It can be used for those types of sketches, too, but they'll be MUCH harder to clean up. At that point you might as well just go with lineart instead.

I feel like the issue with inked lineart not looking quite as good as sketched lineart comes down to a matter of practice. Basically, I feel like most of us are really used to sketching (whether it be idle doodles in our sketchbooks, traditional pencil drawings, or just laying out the sketch-work for an ink drawing), while we have comparatively less practice inking our sketches. The result is that concepts we've intuitively picked up to make our sketches better are harder to translate to our inked drawings. To use your side-by-side comparison as an example: The core difference between your sketched and inked drawings is the use of line weight. Namely, the sketched lineart has a really good expression of line weight to differentiate proximity, focus, material weight, etc., while the inked lineart has much less distinction in line weight, both in terms of extremes (the thickest inked lines are about half as thick as the thickest sketched lines) and consistency (ex. her sleeve has a highly varied weight in the sketched lines, but pretty uniform weight in the inked lines). Now, I don't say that to be overly critical or anything, but rather I find it interesting to observe _why_ so many of us think our sketches look better compared to our inked lines. At the end of the day, the best way to draw is to do whatever works best for you, and I definitely agree that sticking to sketched lineart can be a lot easier for a lot of artists (after all, that's just how pencil artists draw). Speaking personally, I'm just so reliant on absurdly messy sketches that lineart is more of a necessity to make sense of all the nonsense, haha.

I think a big difference is that the line art was pure black while the sketch wasn’t. The sketch had a lower opacity so you could layer on top of it, and when coloring you let the colors affect it as well. Also, the sketch had thicker lines with more line weight variation, which also helped. Color and line weight can add a lot to line art, maybe the issue isn’t line art itself, but how you’re approaching it.

I'm a pretty religious thick lineart user, and inking is generally my favorite part kf the process, but I really enjoyed your presentation of this! Subscribed, hope to see more soon!

I've usually preferred my sketches to my lineart, even if it does come out less 'crisp'. Line weight can be fun, but I only like the end result when I use a marker brush. (It does feel like I'm doing a marker sketch rather than lineart tho. Maybe that's why I like it?)

I have always been doing line art since i started doing digital art until i switched to this technique a year ago and it really help me focus more on other things and save a lot of time. I would say it’s definitely not for everyone but it works well for someone like me.

I tried to clean sketch instead of drawing line-art on top of it and it turned out so cool, I have never had so live line-art! thank you!

the video quality is fantastic! i was honestly expecting atleast 10k for this channel and i was pleasantly surprised on how underrated it is! i love your videos and i love how you just get to the point and how clear you deliver! new sub and like! ❤

Woahh. Dude, you seriously deserve like 100k subscribers. This is actually very good advice, it's easy to understand, and you get to the point. I love it!

I’m really really happy someone pointed this out. As an artist who struggles with impatience doing lineart, this was a really helpful video that encouraged me to sketch instead, which really makes art a more fun process and not having to deal with so many layers. Thank you! ❤

I like that instead of just saying that "line-art no" you provided both pros and cons of it. Great vid 👍

One thing that can help with lineart is to reduce the opacity of the sketch even further to where it is near invisible. That way the lineart is more like a cleaner sketch as opposed to robotic tracing with a loss of detail, gesture, and character. Remember that line variation and that being a bit messy can make it look better. Little "mistakes" won't be visible zoomed out in the final rendered piece. Naoki Sensei showed that completely erratic and skribbled lines still work when it is coloured.

I started out with traditional art and so much of my "lineart" was just a cleaned up sketch - now with my lineart digitally I still treat it like a sketch and end up liking how the lineart looks that way mostly because it was really hard for me to get super clean lines and steady lines because my hands shake with arthritis and yet everyone tells me that sketchy lineart is the "wrong" way to do art and was just "holding me back"

my sketches tend to be very detailed and linearty since I’m used to traditional art more, so one of my favourite art techniques with digital art is either to just.. colour the sketch, or do the basic shapes- like the head circle, get a basic outline for where the body and limbs will be, then make a new layer and treat it like a sketch. I don’t usually need to redo things like hair or facial features when they’re done, the only thing ruining the final piece being that head circle with the cross and the limb lines lmao sketchy art styles are seriously underrated though. as cool as some lineart styles are, I just love when things look sketchy- it gives them a rough and messy look while still looking refined and I love it

Underrated creator, and a comprehensible way of explaining things. Just subbed

I think the one where you sculped the lines of the sketch looked much nicer! I think its because i just like the bolder lines silhuetting around the bigger shapes of the drawing. 10/10 very cute!

The line-artless one is exactly how I wanted my drawings to look like! I see it more charming Thank you very much! maybe It would have taken me years to realize

I think this is a nice look into digital art and the traditional mindset just feels off when you can separate everything into layers, combining multiple steps into your finished artwork, the sketch, the color, the linework, everything is adjustable and that's digital's big strength I'm a traditional pen and ink on paper artist, I color in post in Photoshop over the ink drawing I've made, their are no layers for me when inking on paper, I just ink and hope for the best, I sketch in ink, I draw in ink, I can't take anything back, it's an experience different to pencil. One way of making art is not better than the other, they are simply tools used to make art and the best I've found is combining both tool sets together, like your layers. I don't know if my rant made any sense but to those that read, hello. Have a great day

After enough times being told how clean my lineart is when I was showing someone what for me was a sketch, I've stopped doing lineart stages completely and it's honestly the best thing I ever did and made me actually enjoy doing art again

Thank you, I really needed to hear this! I’ve only been drawing for 7 months, but I forced myself to learn to draw and render in a semilrealism style because I thought that was what was popular on the socials. Now though, I’m struggling to break that habit, but realised that I WANT my lines on show but my line art is too crisp and clean for the simplistic but detailed painted effect I actually want. This makes so much more sense than going over everything with clean line art and it losing that initial flow and character.

As a small animator When I draw for a frame I have to draw really quickly Thus I just adjust my scetch and skip the line art I thought it was a bad thing Thanks for this video! 💙

The way I do my “line-art” is first doing a really rough sketch with thick walls just to get a quick with a general position of outlines, then I use a slightly modified syrup brush from procreate to do outlines and clean them up by adjusting line thickness and so with different erasers. It ends up looking quite sketchy but curated at the same time, but I like it. It’s like a mix between the two where I still do line art but in a sketchy way.

It`s the situation where both options are VERY beautiful to me, and I cannot decide what style I prefer more.

Being left-handed with a right-handed tablet lent itself really well into just refining sketches because every program I've used has transparency bound to a convenient key on the right, VS eraser on the left of both the keyboard and tablet. Pretty quickly led to me just touching up sketches with the same brush rather than lining on new layers, it's far quicker too and stops me obsessing nearly as much about the exact shape of my lines.

Another tip you can do is paint over your lines with a darker color close to the adjacent colours you’ve painted in already. This way you can turn it into a painting that doesn’t rely on line art at all.

This is what I've always done as well! Time and such aside, the real reason I prefer to refine a sketch over do lineart is that the energy carries over. Sometimes I can lose sight of the energy of the drawing when I finish the lineart and turn off the sketch layer. In the beginning it felt like I was being lazy, but seeing this video helped validate the way I do it. Nice work!

That song at the beginning sent me back to my yogscast days.

Thank you for the video! Please keep going, I love to watch you draw. ❤ And I loved the advice on your last four videos too!

As someone who is a somewhat beginner(I kinda consider myself between beginner and intermediate) artist, wow. Honestly I suck at line art, and seeing someone say “You don’t need it” is like someone making someone believe they’re using something they aren’t. At least that’s how my 2 am brain is seeing it. . . Anyway I wanna say thanks for telling me that I don’t need to mess up art I started off as good!

My art always looks terrible with lineart, so I've always just used my sketch layer. thanks for covering this! im mostly a traditional artist, and i'm definitely better at it but I really want to move in to digital so this has helped a lot! new sub and your art is amazing!

THANK YOU SO MUCH, this has been one of the must frustrating things ever, I tend to like my art when i don't lineart, but i'm like "but i'm prob just doing it wrong" smh. Thanks a bunch!

It's interesting to see how similar it looks to what I like doing from time to time, being not doing the sketch (just making guides) You draw the big shapes, then add details, erase and refine! I'm also quite of a maniac on putting everything on a separate layer, helps with complicated masking for later

THANK YOU, line art never worked for me because I can't draw a proper line, be it straight or curved, just can never make it go where I want it. I feel so validated now.

Really resonated with a lot of what I've been feeling in regards to sketching & lineart. Glad to see I'm not the only one or just doing something wrong! Lovely motivational tutorial

Simple yet really dense topic in relatively short video that easy to understand, well im subscribed!

The nice thing about line art is you can use the paint bucket to color. It's the putting in colors by hand that drives me batty.

I’m soo glad someone has finally talked about this. I face the same problems while doing line art and it makes me want to RIP MY HAIRRR!!!! Yet, I do like both with and without line art. Once again, thanks for making this vid and keep up the good work!

I honestly like doing line-art, I enjoy it as a part of the drawing process, in my opinion it is nicer. But I think you are brave for going out and stating your opinion and trying to help others! Keep up the great work man! I also refine the sketch, then line-art :)

This video just validated my entire art journey... I don't enjoy lineart because it takes longer and when I take too long on a drawing, i get impatient and start to rush it, so now, what I'll do is clean up my sketch, slap on a clipped layer and have fun with it.

Nicely done art and tips! ✨👌 Same here! I just do a layout of everything first, including background, then light sketch of the main shapes (whether full body or chibi), then refine and detail those lines to save drawing time! At least I think that's how my art process goes lately.

The sketchy image still looks like lineart but just larger and softer brush. Lineart doesn't have to be thin inked, it can be dynamically sized as well

I do this as wellll!!! this is amazing!! good advice! also damn both look so good, but it is defo about how you want to approach it!

Aah I appreciate this video. I have been trapped in the loop of sketching and line-art, but never coloring or rendering ;w;

man, I don't feel like I could ever get to this stage. Adore the art style!!

This is what i do with pencil paper sketches, and its a ton of fun. I always wondered why i got bored so easily when starting the lineart in a digital work. Makes a lot more sense now! :)

I've been doing this for the last 1 and half years always struggling with my lineart, something artists should learn a long time when they strart art. I'm going to paint something and explain the pros and cons in my own video as you inspired me to do so. But this is generally a very nice step into making your sketch your baby step into an amazing piece of work of art. Its when you start just straight up start canvas painting from this method time, DOES THE TIME FLY, just get eaten. Regarldess I fully enjoyed this video and value the work you put into it.

I've always had been pretty bad at line art and felt that I needed to do it but I'm happy that it's not the case as I've always loved my sketches more.

I’ve been considering this for a few days, and I actually think this will work for me!! This video is totally my sign to start using my sketches instead of lineart Thanks for the tips!

Sometimes the easy way out is the way that hurts your potential. If you choose a method, ask yourself whether you have made a careful decision, or you are just being lazy.

Yt needs more content creators like you! Love the positivity! You got my sub😊

I've always liked my art best during the sketching and colour blocking phase. It just feels more alive, and your brain naturally fills in so many of the gaps. Going in and doing line art ruins it for me.

My OCD will never let me have a peace of mind if i didn't do a clean line art 😂

For me personally, if you have ever watched my speedpaints, you would know that my sketch phase is too messy to do this. I don’t do chicken scratching or whatever you like to call it when doing my lines. I sort of scribble each line, because I don’t usually trace my sketch down to every detail. I mainly use it as a guide for line art. I like doing clean characters with messy backgrounds. I have always done line art because it suits my art style and process well and I find it easier. Also I can render for the life of me, so if I didn’t do line art my art would look atrocious 😂

🎀 I'm absolutely LIVING for your energy and enthusiasm in this video, no time wasted just directly to the point, and you keep a nice fast pace while being fun af to watch

I feel like i use 90% of the time suffering through line art. I really need to try it like you showed😮

UUUGH, finally a video that speaks to me!!!!!! I always felt like the lineart makes my drawing more rough, less fluid, if you know? Skill issue? Maybe. I don't care. I feel like heaven when I sketch, everything goes fluid and goes beautiful. Lineart just screws everything I made. I'm glad I'm not the only one and I'M GLAD I don't have to force myself to do lineart because honestly I felt like an outsider with everyone doing lineart except me :")

Turns out I've been doing the no lineart method for awhile, I mainly just found it redundant to draw again what I just drew over it & instead just edit the original sketch

I call this the Odysseus sketch, you can't know when it stopped being sketch and started being lineart or if it even did at all

I do this even when I did traditional art. Lineart always looked ugly when I did it and I realized I like the sketchy feel always in the end.

Man 2 years of drawing lately barely any progress...and you are the only one the more i listen to the more things make sense.

Layers can be a curse just as much as a blessing. With vector art, line art becomes much more enjoyable.

no way only 2.5k subs? i thought you had like 100k with this kind of quality.. this was pretty useful, subbed!

You make drawings look so easyyy Ive seen a few of your tutorials and they were super simple I will sub to u

Haven't drew in a year but I honestly want to try it now. I personally think it gives it charm and personality.

I don't color my art, so i dont even need to watch this, i just like this dudes art style

I'm someone who loves lineart, and hates skeatching because I have to use different colors to tell things apart. I think it's mainly depends on style, and stuff.

this might be kinda out of the blue but I'm making a comic rn and experimented with lineart where previously my illustrations just went back into the sketch and fixed the lines. Suffice to say I had to start over because the lineart was eating at me. hahah yeah just wanted to share. Loved the video great job at explaining everything. :)

Wow you can really see the difference between the styles and the both look great!

Hmm this seems like an interesting idea! Maybe I’ll experiment with the sketch-like look in my digital art, since my traditional art looks sketchy enough lol

I came to this realization recently. No matter how much i worked at it, my line work never carried the same feel and quality of my sketch work. Then, one day, i said fuck it and dropped the line inking process all together. And my art has been better because of it. Line art aint for every artist. Sometimes, it just doesn't click with your style and methods and clashes instead. And that is perfectly fine. If the technique isn't working, then try a different way.

U have no idea how much I needed this, thanks so much 😭😭💯💯

Your artstyle is so cute! Thank you for the tutorial!

OH BOY me who thought I was being delusional when I was doing that so much, especially with my doodles. It's a bit like the technique of anti-blur, where you firstly put big colored shapes that reflect the general form, then refine by erasing or adding smaller shapes, until which you may start doing the lines! You should try that too! I remember learning that when I was just drawing on a paper and accidentally spilled water over. I saw indefinite shapes that almost trigger my pareidolia into actually fully shaping them. I made a bunny out of one, if I remember correctly...? But yeah, I've often gotten to be more expressive if I just do slightly random sketching, such that I reduce/control the variance later on. Often makes for faces thare are more unique between drawings, for instance!

I love watching art videos knowing that I never will draw for some reason. But yeah, awesome stuff, can't believe you dont have more subs!

As someone who makes lineless art, I see this as an absolute win

Finally someone actually said this! like my line art is absolutely horrendous but my sketch is a lot better so I tend to just “forget” to do line art, and jump straight into coloring after i finish the sketch, honestly most people think it was just me being too lazy to learn how to lineart properly which it probably is lol.

new to this channel, for some reason your vibe gave me the impression that you're the kind of artist with a riot games artstyle, or someone like sinix design. Then as I watched at the end it definitely felt more like a korean artstyle. It was quite a surprise, but a pleasant one since JP and KR art styles are also my taste (Chinese too, and they're really good, but sometimes the styles delve more into semi realism)

dude I've been struggling with this a lot, I know every technique but my aproach was pretty messy, thx for the comparison!

I always didn't do lineart over my sketches, then I learned that it really just depends how you sketch. If you sketch with the same brush you do lineart with, and if you sketch a lot of detail, there's really no point in doing lineart. But I started doing traditional art, and noticed the difference between drawing with graphite and drawing with ink. With graphite, the final piece is essentially a cleaned sketch, with ink the sketch is completely erased (usually).

Nice video! Very helpful and encouraging. Thanks!

Gigachad Method Sketch, then Color with a solid brush but turn on the border effect(Clip Studio) or Stroke layer effect(Krita). Adjust as wanted. Boom you got 50% of your lineart already done. If desired, just go back and layer lines on top for some extra oomph.

For the last year I have been sticking just to sketches and not doing line art. I much prefer the softer lines of the pencil tool over the hard lines of the pen tool.

I’ve been practicing this for the vast majority of my art journey. Sketch something out and refine the lines out with time. However as my art improved and I started actually working on the actual lines by cleaning them up, refining them, so on, I realized that refining the sketch into a finished drawing was starting to get quite troublesome. Patching everything up to look finished started to become hard, especially in complex drawings as I always found myself forgetting to fix a line or more. In my opinion, this technique mainly works for people whose sketch actually resembles the finished drawing’s traits. This varies wildly amongst individuals and different drawing styles and it does work for me, it still does. However once I jumped to lineart, I noticed that it eliminates me the trouble of tirelessly fixing lines and rough edges while making me able to capitalize on the structure of the sketch to make the lineart essentially better, especially from an anatomical standpoint. Lineart however doubled the amount of time I need to spend making art. A piece that would’ve originally required 3 hours of work now requires over 6. I will definitely still use this technique for drawings I don’t consider as important, and someone out there can definitely refine a sketch better than I ever did, but I honestly think I’m slowly moving away from that technique.

As somone just starting out art, this is a huge surprise. I had it set in my mind that u could only have fineshed pieces if they had lineart. And imgoing to tru withought lineart and see what happens!

i never do sketches, so line art is the first step for me lolll

Thanks for the tips! Underrated vid.

interesting points here, im gonna try these in the near future 👍

I really recommend everyone here learning about line weight - this is often why your lineart looks stiffer than a sketch.

fr my sketch is literally my lineart except i just clean it up a little and it doesn’t ruin my drawings

Awesome video very informative,thank you

Damn dude i thought you'd have like 100k+ subs, the quality of this video is subpar, keep it up!

Wow, this was pretty helpful. I have allways drawn with pencil/pen, and when I moved into digital art it was harder and more difficult. Thank you for the video :D

I used to do sketching when I started. Usually I just did sketches and stopped there because lineart was tough. In the end though, I ended up just stopping sketching altogether, just using lineart. It’s weird but it works somehow.

This also feels like something that can help when you're transitioning from pencil and paper as its kinda similar to how its done (atleast by me with my limited "skills")

Glad you found what works for you! Only thing is, you still used lineart lol just with thicker, weighted lines. You mentioned you struggled with rendering. What might actually be happing is you're using STRONGER lineart to compensate for the other areas you're struggling in. Yes, this line approach can be used very masterfully (for example, certain shots of the titans in Attack on Titan's first few seasons), but it's important to evolve beyond it being merely a crutch. You didn't abandon lineart, you're just tapping into using line weight effectively. Maybe you're finding your style. Keep it up! 💯