Definitive guide to making line art like a pro

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Johns77

Johns77

With what are you looking for, learn to make line art like a God, well look no further, here you have the definitive tutorial series, yes, I know what it is going to say that you have the pulse of a 60-year-old grandmother, you are initiated and you don't want to pass I work long hours sitting to make a regular line, and if not I'm a street vendor who wants to sell you the miracle remedy that improves your complexion and prevents prostate cancer. I'm just Johnny Art and this is a bugged line.

First context, I'm sure you must have many questions, what tool it is, how it is used and why almost no one talks about it and the truth is, the last question is the one to which I am least clear about an answer, I suppose the pride of many artists, I hope you don't. You are one of those XD because people come here to paint Chinese monkeys and not to teach moral classes.

 

The definitive tool to improve is the combination of the vector layer and the tool figure having a mastery from novice to expert of the properties of the tool.

But first you must create a new canvas, you must know in what resolution and for what platform you are going to publish your work. For example, good resolution images are considered those that have 300 dpi. 300 dpi equals 300 dpi width by 300 dpi height. For example, a 10cm x 15cm photo is equivalent to a 4 x 6 inch image. For the image to have a good resolution, it must be 1,200 dpi x 1,800 dpi.

 

 

Here I leave you the most recent specifications for the size of images on different social networks, such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X.

Basic image sizes on Instagram

  + Profile photo: 320x320px

+ Landscape:1080x566px

+ Portrait:1080x1350px

+Square:1080x1080

 + StoriesandReels:1080x1920

Basic image sizes on Facebook

  + Profile photo: 170x170px

+ Landscape:1200x630px

+ Portrait:630x1200px

+ Square:1200x1200px

  + StoriesandReels:1080x1920px

  + Photoport:851x315px

Basic image sizes in X (formerly Twitter)

  + Profile photo: 400x400px

+ Landscape:1600x900px

+ Portrait:1080x1350px

+ Square:1080x1080px

  + Photoport:1500x1500px

Basic image sizes on LinkedIn

  + Profile photo: 400x400px

+ Landscape:1200x627px

+ Portrait:627x1200px

+ Square:1080x1080px

  + Photoport:1128x191px

Basic image sizes on TikTok

  + Profile photo: 200x200px

+ Landscape:1920x1080px

+ Portrait:1080x1920px

+ Square:1080x1080px

+ Stories:1080x1920px

Let's go to what matters and that is the tool, as you can see in the image the figure tool is composed of a straight line, curve, poly line, dashed curve, polygons, lasso and others that together have a wide variety of shapes to make any line art, but in this first part we will study the curved line, so once the new canvas is created, select in the layers panel to create a new vector layer and everything is ready for the next step.

 

The curved line, unlike the straight line, works completely differently because although you can choose where it starts and where it ends, this rule records well, the curved line, after being drawn, you choose the parabola. Select the curved line and without releasing the left clip, choose where it will start until the end and then once drawn you modify the parabola very easily.

You also don't necessarily have to change from a curved line to a straight line to draw a straight line, you just draw it and when you press left clip twice the parabola will stay in the same place, leaving the line you drew exactly the same. Let's explore the part that makes the line unique, which are its properties.

We have the option of brush size and opacity by modifying these values we can convert that curved line into a pencil stroke for sketching, I use opacity less than 30% or sometimes the color gray to avoid tracing with a pencil, it is a perfect imitation and even more so when you reduce the size of the brush. This is the smoothing property option that I always have in mind since when using the first brush shape it gives a touch to the line art as if it were a strong Japanese-style clear line drawing. Below smoothing is the brush shape property that contains 12 brushes depending on the version you have and if you haven't added more patterns in the Clip Studio community there are various materials that you can add. Originally Clip Studio comes with 12 brushes which may be a lot but the first 5 should be enough.

 

 

But if you want to modify it, for example, any of these brushes, you can do it just press the sub-tools palette at the bottom of the wrench icon and you will have a whole menu of options that you can use to your liking and add to modify the brushes.

You can use crazy properties in the brush such as combination modes by adding strong light effects to add brightness to the line art or multiplication to darken your line art, also by enabling the start to finish function, very useful for drawing hair since you can simulate the curvature of the hair without the need to draw by hand, once enabled you can press the eye and it will be visible in the tool properties bar, I have the start or end enabled at 20 both, by activating and deactivating I can imitate the fine tip of the brush imitating many line art brushes such as the g nib used for inking manga and Western comics. An important part is the textures where you can add textures of blocks, bricks, shapes of tree leaves, brooches, chains to combine it with your line art which is great considering that you will not have to use or spend time making those patterns.

Now the moment of truth applies to every vector drawn in a vector layer, create a vector layer and select operation, object tool and you will be able to modify any vector drawn in the vector layer at will, the same does not happen in the layer of raster, to modify those traced vectors right click or H on the keyboard convert raster layer into a vector layer. Do you remember the rule that I told you about the curved line, well forget about that rule because with the object tool you can modify each point of the trajectory vector, even move it and turn it into something new like modern art, for this you will have to go to the Tools section Go to the Line Correction icon, which controls the vector points. Now you can edit the points and lines. Here I leave you a small summary of what each tool does.

 

Control Point: Edit by selecting a group of points

Pinch line: reduce the number of points

Simplify line: Smoothes the line

Connect lines: edit the width of each point

Modify Line Width: Increase or decrease the width of a line with pen pressure

Redraw Line: Redraw a line without creating a new one

Redraw width: modify the width to the desired measurement.

Vector Draft.

Unlike the classic eraser, this tool can be activated by selecting the vector eraser. In the vector layers there are three types of erasers which will make your strokes even easier. We have the Standard Eraser: Erases in a standard way.

Eraser to intersection: Erase the line up to where it meets or collides with other lines

Delete entire line: deletes the line from the path in its entirety

Vector eraser inside vector layers will help you correct errors effectively.

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