Big Picture Kid - My Art School Journey

Welcome to the forums!

For smoother lines
I turned off stabilization early on (mostly because it is slow) and it helped later. I think Marc even suggested it but I may be wrong. You can try doing draw a box. And well practice, it will come with time. I'm sure others will give you better advice

I meant turned off. Some people will tell you to turn it on others to have it off. Drawing with it can be helpful but you will rely on it. Once you have line quality it all comes down to preference. I draw without it

It is also a thing that can be improved along the way. So as long as you keep regularly drawing you don't have to worry too much about it

Take your time and good luck!

heyos welcome to the forums!

eyy you are in good company, lots of us are animators/artists (hobby-wise anyways)

imo pen pressure also plays a good role in your line shape.

I'd say when trying to make smooth lines, do it quickly in one swift stroke and keep practicing til you can make a straight line with one stroke.

try it on all sorts of angles and directions.

Here's a link to the discord: https://discord.gg/9Q2pfATHke

idk if it works tho - never invited anyone to someone else's discord before XD

Hey there! welcome to the forums! I'm getting myself ready to rejoin the art school community too, so we'll be starting off the lessons together it seems. Hope to improve lots with you

Welcome to the forums, I look forward to seeing how you improve.

In regards to stroke smoothness I'd like to second this advice

It feels to me like a balancing act of smoothness and accuracy by changing up how fast you do the stroke. It's something I struggle with.

Welcome to the forums BPK! I'm also an eager manga enthusiast, I think you'll have a good time in the forums and learn a lot from the community!

We also just started a comic/manga forum in the art school discord where you can find resources, videos, works from some of us, and much more. Highly recommended if you want to dwell more into it.

Discord link to the comics/manga section:
https://discord.com/channels/371283268215242784/1245965680168140821

On regards to smooth lines, everything others said is pretty useful. It's usually a combination of line confidence, technical knowledge on line weight, brushes and practice.

I can share what has worked for me for now:

1) Unless you are adding fine detail, make sure to do long strokes for your lines using your elbow and shoulder. The hand can only rotate so much so you end up with little "scratchy lines", but by doing long motions the overall line should have a nice flow to it.

2) In general, I end up doing 3 layers. One for the initial draft or idea, usually very crappy, but just putting the idea on paper. Then the actual detailed and drawn sketch, usually with bad lines, but overall well drawn. Final layer where I'm just "tracing" my detailed sketch, but focusing on making the lineart as pretty as I can.

3) Make it a habit of undoing lines and repeating them until you get that "right perfect line". Shortcut your undo key to something you have at your finger, then draw a line, if it's not good, undo, repeat, and repeat this a few times until you're happy with the line and move on to the next one.

4) Don't worry about going beyond the limits with your lines. I personally find it easier to erase line excess, than to get the line perfectly in one go. I'll also redraw over an existing line if I feel it needs more "weight", and then erase excess as needed.

5) Patience!! Most of the steps above might seem like a lot to just do a simple drawing, but as you get familiar with your pipeline, you get more comfortable and faster at doing it.

Other than that, I recommend looking at what other artists videos recommend, trying it out, see if it's working for you, and if not, move to another one. Keep experimenting until you find something that works for you. If you don't experiment or try things out, it'll be hard to find a solution that works specifically for you.

Here are a few to help get started:

You just made my day Glad you're enjoying it! We tend to become very passionate about our projects, so to hear appreciation is probably the best reward we can have as artists.

Bests of luck and see ya around!