# Technique - What to do?



## vialu (Aug 18, 2016)

Hey FA forum-ers,

I'm having some trouble improving certain parts of my technique and want to know what you do to improve specific things. Not drawing subjects or things like that - more practice helps those - but I mean things that you need to learn something new to be able to practice... do you know what I mean?

My problem that is hanging me up right now is my lines. (Here's my FA if you want to look really close at some of my lines Userpage of vialu -- Fur Affinity [dot] net No matter what I do I can't make them smooth or flowing once I look at the whole picture. They feel too small or choppy or 'wiggly' and ruin the motion I'm trying to make in my art. Also, I use a Bamboo and Corel, thinking about switching to Photoshop and an Intuos, I'd love to hear more about those too.

What do you do when you're stuck and don't know HOW to practice on the problem the RIGHT way?


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## quoting_mungo (Aug 19, 2016)

If you want your software to help you smooth out your lines, I'd recommend trying SAI, Clip Studio Paint, or Lazy Nezumi. 

Otherwise, the best way to get smooth lines tends to be drawing larger than you want your final product to be, which when you resize it down generally results in little imperfections becoming unnoticeable. Also, I hear (do as I say, not as I do! ) using long, relatively quick strokes rather than little sketchy strokes to build your linework generally helps making it smooth and promotes dynamic artwork.

My personal favorite piece of software is actually Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro. For some reason its brushes just click better with me than the ones in SAI or CSP (both of which are great pieces of software, and SCP fairly regularly comes on sale for like $15, so it's not going to break your bank).


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## darien (Aug 19, 2016)

*things to try:*

increase your stabilizer settings (in Sai this means using s3-s6)
work with a larger canvas. (about 3-4 times larger than you want the end result to be) when done resize down and save as a seperate file. This will usually make things appear much cleaner.

use editable vector lines (in Sai this means the pen tool on a linework layer)
get used to doing quick smooth strokes rather than slow tedious strokes for your final lines. Whatever program you're using has an undo feature, this can be abused to get a line 'just right' and is commonly used for that.
brazier curve tools can also be abused for clean smooth lines.

For further assistance this thread probably belongs in the tutorials and critique section.


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## Mnyama (Aug 19, 2016)

I think part of your problem is also that your lines are pretty thick, and also completely black. Since they're totally black, instead of something like brown or dark blue, the contrast is pretty startling. 

If you want to keep working with that style though, a trick is to work at twice your normal size when you do the line work, and then shrink it down. It gets rid of a lot of the smaller wobbles.


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## Os (Aug 22, 2016)

Two words: Brush stabalizer.  If you're using Sai, try using an ink layer and setting the brush stabalizer on the top bar at s-1 or s-3.


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## InpuOsirisson (Sep 26, 2016)

I know I'm very very late for this.. I was looking through the category of photoshop, and saw this. I was curious, and thought maybe this was a question that could have helped me, too.. Anyways.. I use a mouse for my photoshop.. You have no idea how lucky you are to have a drawing pad.. Since I can't draw lines perfectly at all with a mouse, I use the pen tool. 






This video explains it a bit.


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## Revous (Sep 27, 2016)

I'd marry SAI and it's line stabilizer if I could. I use 3 for most of the drawing and even take it up to 7 if I gotta do very specific curves. Yeah, I have very shaky hands.
As other people mentioned, you can also overlay color over your line layer. What I do in most of my pics is lineart > color layer underneath > pick each color then darken it a bit and overlay over the lineart layer. Then merge and, voilà, colored lineart.

For people with good hand/brain coord., my fav technique is (since I suck at delicate lines and all that) is merge the whole thing after my colors are right, then just draw over the lines along with the shading. Quite risky and takes a bit of planning since it's all done in basically a single layer, but it gives the "almost lineless" feel of my pics (click my sig for link to my FA, beware of nsfw tho).


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