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Except from the Gaia Artist's Hospital:

Quick and dirty guide to improving your line quality:
(Doctors and nurses, feel free to add on...?)

Improving line quality is really about improving your confidence. The trick to smooth lines involves a combination of understanding why you're putting those lines down in the first place (knowing what you're drawing), this is confidence, which goes hand in hand with the physical act of drawing a straight and steady line. The more you learn about drawing in general will ultimately improve this but here are a couple of things you can do as you learn:

- First and foremost, instead of drawing short and sketchy lines, try long and continuous ones-- they don't have to be exactly right the first time! Don't worry about erasing if it's a little bit off, just draw another line on top, as necessary to correct things (you actually see this in a lot of professionals' sketchbooks). Train your hand so that it doesn't rely on a motion that scratches back and forth over the line, just go forward. You can worry about cleanup when you have a more complete drawing.

- Lift your elbow off of the table! Keep it off! This is very hard at first, but it allows for those long, flowing brush/pencil/etc strokes. Free movement of your drawing arm is key to many aspects of drawing.

- The no-brainer: understand what you're drawing. If you don't know why you're putting a line down and don't know what you're exactly drawing (this is important when using a reference), you can't have any confidence in your lines and it -will- show. When I help my friends out with this I can always tell what they were thinking through their lines. There needs to be a reason for every mark you make. Always keep this in mind.


Once you have these basics down, these other things will benefit you:

- Draw large. Artists draw large for print and other purposes. When we resize (shrink) for the web, naturally the lines will be smoother. However this has to work in conjuction with your own steady hand~ biggrin

- Speed! Developing confidence and knowledge in your lines helps you to put down lines faster. A line drawn with a quick hand is smooth! Try it. Of course, you can't be haphazard when you draw these lines-- a smooth line done quickly does no good for you if it's in the wrong place. Follow all of the previous techniques in this tutorial in order to have the skills necessary for using speed. Personally, I rely on speed more than drawing large to get clean lines (I don't draw large for any gaia pictures XD).

When you practice these things they'll become subconscious habits and will eventually come naturally. ^~