How to Clean Your Lineart?

2,630

SIENNAMI

1. The Art Creation Process

Every artwork has a beginning.

The creative process can be long, messy, and unpredictable but one thing remains constant: the way art takes shape, step by step.

When you break your process into smaller parts and understand how each one works, you’ll not only learn how to clean your lineart but also refine your entire art process.

DISCLAIMER: Every artist has their own step-by-step approach, but in this tip, we’ll focus on one approach and walk through how I personally handle it along with some general concept of art process.

1.1. Creating a Moodboard

The first step usually involves the daunting search for the right references, inspiration, and guidance on how to move forward.

This stage builds the foundation for how your artwork will ultimately turn out.

1.2. Sketching

The next step - sketching which is often the most challenging.

Here, you establish the base of your artwork, and it can take a while since sketches tend to shift, refine, and receive constant small fixes.

This is the moment your moodboard ideas begin to take shape on the canvas.

1.3. Clean Up

At this stage, every artist takes a different path - moving into lineart, jumping straight into rendering, or finalizing details.

But regardless of the approach, every sketch gets cleaned up and transformed into a clearer idea.

By refining the sketch, the visual “noise” falls away, making it easier to understand what you’re doing and how the final piece will look.

1.4. Grey base And Base Color

After completing the lineart, I usually fill in the areas I plan to color with a flat gray base. Only then do I move on to the Base Color stage, where I begin setting the overall mood of the artwork or comic panel.

It’s ideal to have your color palette prepared, though we’ll discuss that later.

Applying base colors helps you plan and structure the rendering that follows.

1.5. Rendering

After the base colors are done, the hardest stage begins: adding shadows, lighting, and mood-defining details that bring the artwork to life.

Rendering requires a careful touch, as it brings together every previous step and shapes how your final piece will be seen.

2. Why Your Lineart Isn’t Working

There are several reasons your lineart might look off ranging from incorrect workflow steps to issues with brush settings.

In this tip, we’ll cover the most common mistakes and how to fix them.

2.1. Most Common Mistakes

While many factors can affect your lineart, these are the three most common issues.

2.2. Fixing Your Brush Type

Make sure you're using a lineart brush with:

1. Pressure sensitivity enabled, appropriate for your device

2. It maintains clean, crisp strokes without pixelation or blurry edges.

Start by browsing the Clip Studio Assets store for brushes specifically designed for clean, crisp lineart.

Two main tags can help you find brushes suitable for lineart:

1) LINEART

2) INK

Let’s explore ‘Lineart’ search:

Ultimately, how you want your lineart to look is a matter of personal preference.

However, when browsing the LINEART tag, try to narrow down your options by looking for brushes with names that indicate they're intended for lineart, or check the example images and descriptions provided by other users.

Now, let’s look into ‘Ink’ search:

This tag narrows the selection to darker, sharper lineart brushes, helping you expand your search with more relevant results if you want your lineart to pop.

2.3. Fixing Messy Sketch And Brush Settings

A messy sketch can make it difficult to trace your artwork accurately, often leading to uncertain lineart.

The result might look clean, but it can feel like a completely different drawing from your original sketch.

2.3.1. Brush Stabilization and Sketch Color

If you prefer a slightly messy or bold look in your sketches, try using marker-style brushes with light, confident strokes instead of relying on a thin brush or going over your lines too many times.

Brush stabilization often helps reduce the chaos in your strokes, giving you more control and smoother lines.

Here are a few brushes that you can try:

NOTE:

Try changing your sketch color to blue or bright pink, and lower the opacity to around 60-80%. This helps your lineart stand out more clearly as you draw over it.

ALSO, I couldn’t find a link to DAEPEN4 in the store, please attach name or content ID in the comments if possible. Thank you!

Now, try adjusting the Stabilization setting on your brush. This will help smooth out your lines and prevent them from breaking into zigzags.

You can see that without stabilization, the lines look shaky and tend to wobble.

With stabilization, they appear sharper, smoother, and more controlled.

3. Practice Example

In this section, I’ll share and breakdown one of my recent artworks.

Feel free to use it as a reference for your future learning process.

3.1. Step 1 - Setting up 3D Pose with Generic 3D characters from Clip Studio Assets

Setting up 3D poses can save a lot of time, especially when working through multiple frames or complex artworks.

NOTE:

You can always customize your 3D model’s body shape and facial features by going to the Display Object List on your 3D model panel and accessing the 3D Drawing Figure settings.

3.2. Step 2 - Breaking A Pose Apart with a Quick Sketch

I usually do between 1 and 5 sketches before moving on to lineart, depending on the level of detail and complexity.

Feel free to move the shapes around if you think the pose needs adjusting.

The best way to develop a sense of space and posing is by practicing lots of quick pose sketches.

3.3. Step 3 - More Defined Sketch

Since this artwork didn’t have a lot of clothing or detailed elements—aside from the props, I went ahead and made a cleaner sketch version.

To keep it looking this clean, I usually erase any messy lines right away and focus on keeping things simple.

3.4. Step 4 - Base Lineart

Over the years, I’ve discovered a helpful tip for drawing lineart: breaking it into two steps

1) Base Lineart - Thin or mixed-weight lines that form the foundation of the drawing.

2) Definition Lineart - Thicker lines added where forms overlap, meet, or need emphasis, used to show depth, define object edges, or highlight important areas.

Below, you’ll see how this works in practice - SCROLL UP AND DOWN BETWEEN STEP 4 AND 5 TO SEE DIFFERENCE.

3.5. Step 5 - Definition Lineart

As you can see, the lineart now stands out more, making the figure look cleaner and better defined.

Keep these four key rules in mind when adding definition lineart:

1. Apply it where lines meet especially where natural shadows would fall in a real object.

2. Use it to define the figures of your characters and give them more presence.

3. Add it to show separation or depth between overlapping elements.

4. Use it to highlight key areas or bring attention to important parts of the artwork.

4. How Your Artwork’s Color Palette Affects Your Lineart

When working on any artwork, keep in mind your planned color palette and how dark or bright the overall scene will be.

This will directly affect how your lineart reads within the full composition.

Let’s compare a dark setting vs. a light setting below.

4.1. Light Setting

In a light setup where the lighting is bright and the background uses lighter tones your lineart tends to stand out more clearly.

Of course, this also depends on factors like clothing colors and small rendering details, but you get the idea.

Main reason is that the darker lines contrast strongly against the lighter environment, making your drawing stand out.

Note: Background purchased from ACON3D and composed using a scene setup in Snaptoon.

4.2. Dark Setting

In a dark setting, your lineart can easily blend into the background especially if the palette is full of deep or muted tones.

To avoid this, add lighting that highlights the edges or key areas of your figure. This contrast helps your lineart stay visible and maintain clarity in the composition.