[For Beginners] How to draw clean lines and line drawings

You may be trying to draw with a digital tool such as Mediban Paint and are having trouble getting your line drawings to look good.

In order to draw a clean line digitally
(1) Know the functions of the app, such as Shake Reduction, and adjust it to suit your needs.
(2) Working with a larger image
(3) Practice your “hands” on a daily basis so that you can draw the line where you want it to be.
There are three basic methods.

(1) No matter how well you can draw lines on paper, if you draw with a tablet pen, there will always be shake.
Shake correction is essential to achieving clean lines.
(2) should always be done when drawing digitally.
When you work with a small image, even if the image looks clear on the monitor, the jagged lines are clearly visible when you zoom in.
It is better to reduce the size of an enlarged drawing (especially when printing) to get a better result.
For (3), you’ll have to get used to manipulating the lines so that you can draw the shape you want.
It’s just a matter of practicing every day!

In this article, you can do all three of the above so that you can draw a clean line drawing.
How to use the Shake Correction function to draw clean lines
Techniques for making lines “look nice
This section introduces the following.

1. [Shake Reduction] Adjusting the Pen Tool

There are several pens included in Mediban Paint by default, but there are generally four that you can use to draw “line drawings” in illustrations and cartoons.
From these, you can adjust the nibs to suit your needs.
(1) Round pen
(2) Pen
(3) Pen (insert)
(4) G Pen

1-1. Select the pen tool

Only he or she can tell you which pen is right for you.
Hand habits are different for each person.

Choose a pen to draw your main lines with after a few drawings,
Can you draw a line that is close to the illustration or image you want to draw?
Is your hand tired?
Is it easy to adjust the intensity of the drawing? (Or is it too strong or too weak?)
etc.

If the line is a little blurry, it’s okay because the next step is to apply shake correction.

1-2. Image Stabilization

Digital line drawings are more likely to be shaky because they are drawn directly on a tablet.
Be sure to apply image stabilization.

Set the image stabilization here.
The higher the value, the stronger the correction.

In this case, I set it to 25.

The higher the value of the stabilizer, the more it is automatically (and forcibly) corrected after you finish drawing the line, so it may not turn out the way you want it to.
Also, if you have a Bezier curve (a line drawn with a path. Lines of the same thickness can be drawn evenly. This is different from analog line drawings drawn by hand). The image tends to look inorganic, like

If you feel that you want the stabilizer to be a little softer, or that you want more natural contrast, or that you want the stabilizer to be more automatic, change the pen tool or change the stabilization value to adjust the image stabilization value.

The following article provides detailed information on image stabilization.
> Use Correction to draw beautiful lines!

Get to know your line drawing habits!

What kind of lines are you drawing on paper with a pencil or millimeter pen?

A: Single line, long strokes.
B: Tracing over and over again, lots of overlapping lines.
C: Short lines are cut into small pieces and connected little by little to make a long line.

People with B and C may not be used to drawing lines in the first place.
It’s best to practice drawing lines a little every day, either on paper or on a tablet.

For people with B and C, drawing with a digital tool will correct the lines, so they will be cleaner than when you draw on paper.
But even when drawing digitally, it’s better to draw a single line where it should be drawn, so that the lines are smoother and more natural.
If you overlap or connect too many short lines, the natural momentum of the line is lost and the line tends to look unnatural.
Also, if you enlarge the image, you may see interruptions in the overlaps and connections.
Even if the lines look good on the monitor, they may show up when printed.

Drawing a single line may not be your forte at first, but you can improve it considerably with practice.
Get to know your line drawing habits and practice with your hands over and over again.

1-3. Adjust the pen tool in and out

The beginning and the end of a line is called “cutout”.
When the bleed-through is turned on and off, there is a clear difference between the beginning and end of the line.

In Mediban Paint, the Pen tool is the only tool that comes standard with CropScape, but you can also use the Round Pen and G Pen to add or remove padding as you like.
Click the gear symbol that appears when you hover the cursor over the pen tool to open the screen below.
The smaller the value for “Minimum Width”, the thinner the bleed is, and the larger the value, the larger the bleed.

I drew a line with each pen.
They are all set at 10px wide and 10px minimum width (the width of the pen in and out).

For this line drawing, I will mainly use a G-pen, and depending on the part (hair, eyes, etc.) I will use a round pen.

I’ve decided on a pen tool specifically for line drawings.
Next, let’s draw with it.
Let’s draw a preliminary sketch with the pen we made (using the round pen).
This time, I will draw a B5 size, 600dpi, color mode canvas.

It’s still a rough sketch, so don’t worry about the lines as I’ll re-draw it nicely later, but let’s get some of the shape right.

 

2.[Working with magnification] Tips for making your line drawings look nice

Be sure to zoom in and draw a line drawing.

I recommend working at 66% or more, preferably 100%.
When you’ve finished drawing the lines to a certain extent, shrink them to check the overall balance.
Repeat this process to complete the entire line drawing.

2-1. Connect the short lines

It’s quite difficult for a beginner or someone who is not used to digital drawing to suddenly draw a clean line with a single line.
However, it is possible to “draw short lines to make them look nice”.

I have tried drawing the outline of the character’s face in 5 parts (I’ve changed the color to make it easier to see).

If you check the “Protect Transparency” box and then fill in the black and shrink it, you can see ……

It turned out almost as good as if I had drawn a single line!

This method is very useful and can be used by beginners as well as intermediate and above, so please practice it.
When you connect the lines, be sure to zoom in to nearly 100% and overlap the lines in and out neatly.

2-2.Draw a single line

Parts that you want to create a natural momentum, such as hair, look nicer when drawn in a single line.

Some people are able to draw relatively well if they move their elbows in a big way instead of using their wrists as a fulcrum.
Different people have different habits, so try to actually draw the line as many times as you can to find your “own way” of drawing it.

Hair is a great way to practice drawing a single line.

When you draw a hair line, zoom in or out on the screen and take note of the balance as you draw it.
You can also make the lines smoother by using a slightly stronger shake correction.

Separate the layers into parts!

When you’re actually drawing a line drawing, you may want to revise it later.

It’s especially difficult to correct hair and clothing when they are overlaid on the person, and if you erase or draw them over and over again, even a well-drawn line may disappear.

So let’s keep the layers separate for each part!

For example, if you draw the person, the person’s hair, the person’s clothes, the eyes, etc. in separate layers, it’s very convenient because you can scale, erase or add to the drawing later on in each part of the layer, and the other line drawings will not be affected.

Once the drawing is divided, copy the necessary layers at the end and merge the copies (it’s safer to keep the separate layers as well, just in case).

 

3. [Practice clean lines] How to move your hands and draw lines

Here are some tips on how to draw beautiful lines.
I make a layer for line drawing on top of the rough sketch I have made earlier and draw more and more lines.

3-1. Use different lines for each part

Use different thicknesses of lines for different areas, such as the contours of the face, the body, the wrinkles in the clothing, and the expression of the eyes.

For example, use a G-pen for the main line drawing, use a round pen for the wrinkles in your clothes, hair and eye details, and so on.
Of course, you can also use the same pen, but with a different thickness.
Of course, you can use the same pen with different thicknesses.

3-2. Draw a line with the length of the scroll in mind

Draw a short line and a long line.

For example, as we did in Chapter 2.
‘The hair is highly compensated and drawn with a single line and a large hand movement.’
Short lines of detail, magnified and carefully pieced together.
Repeat this process to create a clean line drawing.

3-3. Clean up overflowing lines

In order to merge the line drawings drawn separately in layers into one picture, I erased the overflowing parts with an eraser.

Since the hair was too thin in the lines throughout, duplicate the hair layers and layer them on top of each other, erasing only the areas you want to leave thin and crisp with an eraser (do not join the layers together).
This method is useful if you want to make the line drawing thicker and darker.

Use a fine pen to draw in the details, such as the inside of the eyes, to complete the picture.
(*If you make a color illustration later, do not draw the inside of the eyes with line drawings)

[This is the finished line drawing]
*If you tone it, it becomes an illustration at the beginning.

Use “ctrl+z”!

It’s a hassle to click the “back” arrow every time you can’t draw a line the way you want to.
By drawing a line with your right hand pen and if you fail, you can smoothly go back to the previous step and redraw it by “pressing ctrl + z” with your left hand (or vice versa if you are left-handed).

This combination of keys that perform a specific action is called a “shortcut key”.
(On a Mac, some key names and combinations are different, but the shortcut keys are generally similar.
There are a variety of other shortcut keys as well, so it’s useful to learn them little by little.

 

Summary

What did you think?
In this article, we’ve discussed “How to draw a clean line drawing”.
In order to draw a clean line drawing with a digital tool like Mediban Paint, you need to

(1) Know the functions of the app, such as Shake Reduction, and adjust it to suit your needs.
(2) Enlarge the image and work on it (also check the overall balance by shrinking it during the process).
(3) Practice your “hands” on a daily basis so that you can draw the line where you want it to be.

When you can draw a clean line drawing, it’s easier to pour buckets of tone and color into it.
We hope these tips will help you improve your illustrations.

Please refer to the following article for adjustment of pouring.

> “How to use “Close Gaps”

If you want to add more definition to your line drawings later on, please refer to the tips here.

>”The 3-step line drawing quality improvement technique in 5 minutes!
However, if you use this method, it is recommended to use a different layer just in case.