Tangle's Guide To Line Art

Contents

Intro

It's 1 am. You're playing HEE on your laptop, typing very slowly so you don't wake up your very cranky cat, who happens to be sleeping on your lap. Your eyelids are dropping, as your shoulders hunch to shield the light from touching your moggy. Then it happens.

Bam! Someone posts a Join.Me in chat. Still half-asleep, you click on the link dozily only to find someone colouring in lines, something a toddler could even d-

Cut! Nu-uh. It doesn't work like that. Sure, you do get those lazy colourists who are just that - they colour in. But in every medium, you will get those people who just want to do it, and fast. That has nothing to do with what line art really is.

And in this, my good students *winks* I'll tell you exactly what it is...

Getting Started

So you've gotten through that word wall I created on the first post, and you're interested. But where to begin?

First off, choose the line art. I'll describe more of this process in a later post, but for now we'll keep it short and sweet. Then once you've loaded it onto your editing program (I use Pixlr X, it's amazing for line art) you unlock the layer and add an empty one. Your lines must always be the very top layer.

Now onto picking the colour. Either this is a custom, or you're doing whatever pops into your head. At first, I suggest doing a simple base colour, like chestnut or bay. To get a realistic shade, I find a stock image of that same colour, load it onto the editor, and then use the eye dropper tool to pick out the right shade. Try to find a part of the horse that isn't completely in shadow or light, for a neutral realistic colour. This stage does not apply if you are going for a fantasy horse.

Then, on that empty layer you added earlier on, colour in the horse. This sounds simple. It is, but not as much as you would think.

I generally use the polygon lasso tool and nip around the edges of the lineart - if it has thicker lines, this step will be much easier, but even thin ones are airly easy to use.

If you don't have a lasso tool, I like going around the edges with a smaller 40px brush with 20% softness first, to make sure I stay in the lines. Once that's done, I can move onto a 100px to fill in the whole horse. The size in pixels may vary, depending on the size of your canvas. If you're working on a 3000 × 3000 canvas, you'll need a larger brush, and same goes for smaller ones.

So now you're done with the base...or so you think. Go around the edges of it with a 20% softness eraser brush, making sure you left nothing outside of the lines. You will probably need to do this again once you've shaded, but it is still definitely worth it to do it now. Ends up saving time.

Once you've done that, make your eraser brush even smaller and erase the area that covers the eyes. Do not erase anything else. You'll understand this later on.

Voila! You are finally done with the base of your horse.

Shading

NOTE: If you don't have access to the Dodge/Burn tool, you can gradually darken/lighten your colour shade and paint the shadows. This is much more time-consuming though, hence why I use my shortcut.

Markings

Tips & Tricks

Tip No.1: Never work on a white background.

White is an incredibly forgiving colour, especially if you're creating a black, white or grey horse. You can very easily go way out of the lines, and only notice it once you put it on an image background or make it PNG. Saves time and thoughts to use a coloured or grey background. (I like using a red-grey colour, depending on what horse I'm working on)

Tip No.2: Only use PNG lines.

PNG lines mean that there is no background to them, the image consists only of the lines. As stated earlier, the line layer should always be on the top. If it has a background, it will block out everything else you draw. Hence why you should only use PNG lines.