Serpintine Line

How you draw your lines is really important if you want to convey expression, emotions, gesture and all sorts of other information.

Pen pressure is one of the key things that you have to learn to vary and enhance your mark making. When I was studying in my first year at university, I unfortunately slammed my left finger in the door of my car. The result was a completely useless, damaged index finger. I had a project to complete and one of the things that my illustration lecturer had told me was to reduce the pencil pressure to create a line that was emotive and conveyed lots of information about the things being drawn. I had to change my grip on my charcoal and I saw the difference in the sensitivity of line I created.

Some of the things line can tell the viewer:
A dark line under an object will tell the viewer that the object makes a shadow and have volume and weight.

A light, narrow line could convey light, flowing material/clothing.

So you want to convey the right information then you need to do the right type of line.

It can be tricky going from an intense grip to a light loose one. Just try to do it with an object in front of you.

 This picture is a soft lined drawing. The main image is drawn in a darker line than the chair. The light lines of the chair imply that he is on a chair and not just floating in the air.  I didn't need to add all the details, but just give an idea of the shape of the chair.

In the top image, I have left some areas completely white and used smudging sparingly, to give greater sense of space. The next one, I have over shaded using shadow and it makes the model look tired and dirty. Bare in mind that this was a ten min drawing and I was pretty tired when I did it.