How Can I Avoid Wasted Lines?

Hi, my problem is that i pull a lot of lines on paper. and many of them are just wrong or end up making the pose completely wonky. i asked someone before but i got no answer so please tell me how can i learn avoid wasted lines.

Hey Idon'tknow,

First, I’ll repeat what Aunt Herbert wrote the other day, which I thought was excellent advice: breathe. Take your time. Getting nervous because of the pressure of the timer and trying to get as far as possible always pushed me to make as many lines as possible, hoping one of them would be the right one, but this just produced messy sketches.

When you take your time, think about what each line is supposed to depict on paper (e.g., muscle shape, shadow, or motion) before you make it. What angle does it have? How is it supposed to cross or overlap other structures in its vicinity? Where should it be thick or thin? How should it curve? Then, deliberately try to put it down just like that. It might also help to study artists you look up to and see how they use their lines.

Finally, I would recommend working without a timer for a while until you are more satisfied with your lines.

Hope this helps. Happy drawing!

• Mahatmabolika edited this post on August 17, 2024 6:17am.

@Mahatma, thank you for the praise. I am a bit afraid that your answer won't help IDK a lot, just because I know their previous entries and questions a bit. They certainly don't suffer from naive haste. Their strength is a super analytical and highly self critical approach to everything they are doing, their flaw is that they constantly raise their bar for being satisfied with themselves, and then struggle to keep their frustration from impacting both their art and communication.

@IDK, sorry for talking third person about you. I often struggle to answer your questions, and that is not because they are bad questions, but because they are actually often quite complex and insightful, but you are looking for simple answers to them.

Most honest and shortest answer to your question: I wish I knew myself.

A bit more elaborate: Suppose, you and me, we were both given the same reference to draw from, and we agreed to both use only a specific numbers of CSI lines to depict it. Probably our results would look quite differently. Then we would somehow hijack Mahatma here and be able to blackmail them into being the referee to decide which of our solutions was just better. They would probably honestly refuse the answer, as no matter how hard they tried, they could probably only tell us things like: OK, I find it easier to understand the pose in this sketch, but I find it easier to read the body type in that other one. This one looks more dynamic, but that one gives me a better idea of the volumn of the body. This one transports the emotional expression stronger, while that allows me to more easily understand the anatomy.

The logical first step to answering your question is what you already did, namely asking it, but I am afraid, the second step will always be somewhat trial and error.

I think, even if we could invite all the famous draftspersons and art teachers into our challenge, Stan Prokopenski, Michael Hamilton, Lovelifedrawing, Karl Kopinski, Kim Jung Gi, Peter Hahn, Eliza Ivanova, Wilhelm Busch, Heinrich Kley, Leonardo da Vinci, whoever... Maybe there would be a cluster of similar lines at the start, but the higher we would raise the number of lines, the more even they would diverge from each other. Even if you asked the same person now, and then a year later again, there would be differences.

So, what is left? We try our best, we repeatedly do it, we compare our own recent results as fairly as possible to each other, and try to hone our own intuition for which lines are truely essential and which ones we can do without. Progress isn't about following the shortest path from point a to point b, but just a lot of wandering aimlessly through unchartered territory, hoping that our grasp of the landscapes improves over time.

I know fully well, that this answer isn't satisfying. It is actually quite frustrating. So why continue with this stupid quest? And, maybe I am misreading you, but from the consistency in your work I don't think so, and I assume the answer for you is the same as for me: You are already hooked to the stuff, and to stop being an artist, you would need a full 12 step recovery program, and even then, those questions would still haunt your dreams.

To end on a lighter note: I always almost find your questions hard to answer, and sometimes I don't even try, because I feel I am mostly looking for an excuse for myself to catch another break before I am back to the drawing board. But whenever I try to answer them, I always find them very worthy to ponder, and attempting to answer them often points me to another path, that I have so far overlooked.

Hi. Have you ever tried drawing in the air about an inch above your paper or tablet? Do all the scribbly seeking strokes in the air, until your hand can feel the lines for the pose that you see. Then lower your drawing tool and make your final, confident strokes on the page. If you can't visualize the lines on a blank page, you could draw a faint mark for the ends of each limb, and for changes in line direction, and then connect these marks with single lines.

If that technique doesn't work for you, you could try drawing in your usual way and then erasing it until it's barely visible (or lowering the layer transparency and changing to a new layer) and then draw over your original drawing with clean non-scratchy lines.

Both methods will help you practice drawing clean lines. I wish I could tell you how long it will take to change your habits, but I still use too many lines myself, and erase a lot. Good luck!

With all respect, "nuh uh" I tried to adopt Mahatma's tip and now i decided to make them differently. Here is thge result https://imgur.com/a/H39D0QJ .

But thanks anyways

Ok, I never thought of that I'll try it out @Katt . Thanks

I am not sure, whether you will even believe me, or if you can make something out of it, but I wanted you to know, that my first spontaneous impression of that page was: "This actually looks pleasant!". I am aware, that the aestethique that I saw isn't the aestethique you are looking for, and how infuriating this must be for sure.

I just wished for you to be somewhat more open to the beauty of your own work, and to be more forgiving to its faults.

As I said, your questions are always insightful and complex. It is not easy to find answers to them, that satisfy myself. But let me try another approach:

I think part of not producing "wasted" lines is to just accept your decision to draw a line as final.

Drawing process:

1. You look at the reference and decide upon the line with which you want to start

2. You measure and draw it as good as you can

3. You look at the reference again, and decide which is your next line

4. You measure where it will fit on your existing drawing and draw it as good as you can.

5. Return to step 3, until either the time runs out, or you decide, that it is OK to stop drawing.

Step 4 can be somewhat critical. It CAN happen, that while you look at your drawing, you realize, that your next line does not fit neatly, because you made a minor or major mistake in your prior lines. If it was a minor mistake, you can fudge your next line a bit to still make it fit and make the mistake a bit less obvious. This WILL off course impact the final effect of the drawing a bit, but a minor flaw in an otherwise well made drawing doesn't ruin everything, it is just a bit of extra character. If it was a major mistake, and you really see no way forward for the drawing, well, sh** happens. Maybe it's time to just start a new drawing.

What Step 4 shouldn't do is reevaluating all the lines you already drew. They are there now, they are just what you have to live with to continue your drawing. If you go back and try to draw all of them better, then you are certainly going to produce a lot of wasted lines, and it is unlikely those new lines will turn out decisively better.

In Step 3 on the other hand, deciding where the line should go, there are two possible approaches. I personally prefer to draw with deep black ink, and I make the decision where to put the next line entirely from my visual experience. This isn't the only way to do it, though.

A lot of draftspeople, and amongst them really experienced and accomplished artists, DO draw with searching lines. Those aren't "wasted" lines. They try out a few possible lines on paper (or screen), before they decide which line they want to keep. On paper, this is done by drawing those lines very lightly, and then, when the decision is final, drawing a very strong and dark line over them. (Digitally it is even easier, as they just draw the searching lines on a different lair, which they then just erase after they made their decision).

This is another way to come to the decision which line to continue with, it just delays the decision process a bit. It leaves a few traces of searching lines, but those aren't wasted lines. They had their purpose, and the artist clearly prepared for it, and the contrast between light searching line and strong final line proofs that purpose, and still leaves the final result look intentional and clean. Searching lines don't change the fact, that the decision, once made, is final. Once the decision is made, you live with it, and don't constantly go back and critique all your prior lines while drawing, or you will never get the drawing done and produce a metric ton of wasted lines.

I got a bit of experience playing trombone in a jazz quartett a long time ago, and playing an instrument, you can never take back the tone you just played. But if it sounded strange, you can either blush in embarrasment, or make the next tone sound even stranger, and thereby pretend to the audience that you made the first tone sound strange on purpose, because you are a total musical genius. And just sticking with what you already did is what produces the better result in regards to convincing the audience.

So, one way to avoid wasted lines is to just make sure, that you pick up all the lines you already drew and try to run with them. And if it still doesn't work out, well it's a short sketch, you'll have better luck on your next sketch.

What might help with figure drawing is that- since there is so much to learn- I personally find it simpler to go into each session with an intention/limitations in order to learn specific lessons. Some intentions are like, only drawing the shadows, drawing the contour, separating everything into circles, etc. Each limitation teaches something new about the figure- e.g only drawing the shadows helps to analyze poses into values and helps us stop seeing the figure as a figure and instead as shapes.

I also struggle with excess lines! Some limitations that have helped me is
1. Not lifting my tool at all, one big shape- sometimes making constant circles with your tool as you draw the figure helps as well, I once had a professor who wanted our figure drawings to “be as swirly as possible!”
2. You could choose a bigger drawing tool, large markers or large sized brushes on digital programs help you be more decisive with your lines because each mark takes up so much space you aren’t worried about outlining the body. Used correctly you can use the tool to fill in the torso in one big line instead of many.
3. Or simply, you go into a sketching session with the idea “less lines”, give yourself a restriction and take your time. A 30 second pose where you only use 10 lines, where do you put them? How long should they be for each body part? It almost like finding the line of action. Try decreasing the line limit or increasing it as you go to find a sweet spot. If you do this you should take a few seconds to look at the pose, put a line down, take another few seconds to look at the pose, see on your paper where it should go- with this method you will be spending way more time looking at the image than the paper itself which is a great habit

It is essential to fix any “problems” you find yourself creating with figure drawing by going into each session with intention. Without intention you try to learn everything all at once, which is very difficult! Nobody can find the line of action at the same time they separate all the body parts into 3d shapes at the same time they outline the shadows, at the same time they make the contour, at the same time they add detail- that is called a finished piece! Not a sketch! And that takes wayyyy more time than 5 minutes