Why Your Sketches are BETTER Than Your Finished Art || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY 

I think my own dislike of line art used to be an issue when I still tried to force myself to do it the proper way by making line art a completely separate layer and tracing over my sketches. I'm by no means a professional artist and have no motivation to ever try being one, but I basically decided to break the "trace your sketch to make lines" rule and started just duplicating my sketch layers and erasing the parts of the sketched lines I didn't like to form clearer lines of what was already there instead. I basically call it line sculpting, because it reminds me a little of sculpting clay with my hands or sculpting 3D models more so than just drawing lines in one or two strokes. This process is probably slower and messier, but it gives me that slightly unrefined look that I like about drawing on paper, while still having layers, Ctrl+S and the undo button to save me from mistakes.

i also feel like sketches just look really nice, sketchy looking art is very appealing to me, i love seeing some rough imperfect lines it just looks nice

Honestly, I just clean up my sketch and increase the opacity of it instead of doing lineart at this point. I like the way it turns out much more, because I find keeping the piece's character is way easier, and also cutting out the lineart stage saves SO MUCH time.

i totally agree with sketches just being an art style on its own. since realising this myself, i've been less hard on myself to make the cleanest lineart possible. not everyone's art style and not all of your own individual pieces need to be as "clean" looking as others.

I think your level of familiarity with a medium also influences you: For me personally, I've spent around 20 years of drawing on paper and am at a point where I'm comfortable sketching, lining and coloring with it. I am used to markers and pencils for creating my art. But give me a kind of paint or something else like crayons and I feel more uncertain in using it. Even if they're all "traditional art" materials. The amount of time I've spent on digital art is minimal compared to 20y of experience with drawing on paper. Also I have bought a drawing tablet around a year and a half ago, and I am still getting used to it while sketching digitally. In between I used to sketch on paper, and then started drawing on my computer after I uploaded the picture. Maybe I should go back to testing that out and see how that goes now that I have my tablet. A part of why I stopped doing that was "but all my references are digital".

I always felt like sketch’s feel like they have more “movement” to them. They feel more “lively”. I think it kind of fits into the point you said where in real life, we rarely see straight lines.

My personal solution for reason N°2 people might not like their lineart (the fact that mistakes are much more noticeable) is not being afraid to make major changes in the lineart, even if they deviate from the sketch so heavily I have to change the sketch itself There were times I would be in the middle of colouring, notice something looks off with lineart and then go and correct it I usually also keep lineart and colouring on different layers, so for me, a finished piece isn't a finished piece until I say that it is and if I want to go back and correct That One Thing That Looks Off™, I can (I only did this a couple of times and with very recent pieces as I'm not a perfectionist and usually view my art in an optimistic light, but there's still a possibility)

A notification from you never fails to brighten my Saturday night, especially right now since I am stressed and in the middle of studying for exams 🩷 Love your content and everything that you do, Duchess. Thank you.

I hated lining neatly so much, after a few years, i now have a sketchy lineart style kinda and love it way better

I love how she delves in it like it's an actual science included with in-depth observations and analysis, and with theories that actually seem plausible.

I feel like the reason I like my sketches better Tran my finished work is because I kind of make it TOO clean. Clean to the point I would either color over it, or use it as my linear; falling in between

I hated doing line art so I stoped and now I’m doing digital painting and have improved soooo much in a year !

I think something that has helped me a bit, is to start rendering over the sketch? not under it or doing line art, just try a sort of lineless style with it, start adding the colors over it, I don't usually do it but experimenting with it sometimes allows to keep the feel and weigh of the sketch

I recommend copying the layer and then cleaning up with the vector-trim feature(if you have it)

I would say that the Implied lines and practice ratios were my two biggest reasons. However, I realized this was the case and wanted to fix that so I changed my style. I started making pieces where messy lineart was the intention and added in other new things like sharper edges. I also started getting comfortable with line weights (thanks to your videos actually!) and intentionally focusing on adding details to my work. But really the hardest part of all this was overcoming my fear of letting those who like my art down. But then I realized, that the art people liked the most has typically been the pieces that I made for myself with no intention of showing others. So now I focus on making art for myself and not worry too much about how others would react.

i remember i used to have this problem a lot, and at the same time i used to hate how slow i was at drawing, so i just stopped doing lineart at all. took a while to adjust and clean up my sketches but ig i fed two birds with one scone there

I will also say, this is why I take the time to really refine my sketches. If I take the time to really plan out how the lines will look in the final, then it helps me feel more comfortable with the final result. Hell, I even do rough shading ideas before I even start that process

I only use lineart towards my art business then my original artwork. Drawing cute and chibi forms with my lineart is much easier to draw then doing my original artwork. On top of that, I'm also a perfectionist. If I see a line that is a bit crooked or a line that is too thick or thin, I'll immediately fix it!!

my process works different, since i generally do the sketching/lines at the same time as i draw it, but i have found that for the amount of time it takes me to draw, which could be about 10 hours, i spend just as much time shading, but for all that time i spend on what would essentially be rendering, it's almost never good enough to make it worth doing. related to a few of your other videos, i feel like i've hit a wall, i've considered possible changes but am terrified of "ruining" my efforts which is largely related to perfectionism. i was once assumed to have ocd, but it's more accurate to say that i simply love making the things i do perfect. such as my profile picture. one of the most common surprises people have is that i insist on using a plain old mechanical pencil for the entire thing.

I just recently got into Hero Forge to create more refined designs for my Splatoon-designed characters for the future of my creations. So that they can be realized when they’re humanized. Literally.

I stopped doing ‘clean line art’ and instead polishing my sketches ages ago. I’ve gotten higher praises since then

ty for talking about something eeeternaaally relevant

this used to be my problem ngl i agree with the skill and the line camouflage point. how i adjusted to these problems was honestly experimenting with the arrangement of my process i now realize that i prefer rendering and coloring before doing my lines because i enjoy rendering but hated line art. instead of viewing my line art as the perfected version of my sketch, i now see it as an enhancer for shadows to push whatever stylistic vision im having that day. this depends on the style though, i have another style where i make the sketch look like trash on purpose and keep telling myself "screw it il fix it in post" until it works if your sketch looks bad enough anything will make you feel proud of the proceeding steps. also making my line art thicker really helps. sometimes it feels like part of the shading too

Mate! This all makes so much sense and I’m glad you took it on as a topic. I have always found I like my sketches more and it’s nice to understand why better. I was aware I spent much less time rendering and the effect that was having but I didn’t want to bother until I was better at form. That’s not really the best approach, though. I don’t want to be 100% on sketching and still 0% on rendering. I’ve been making myself work on lineart and colour and it’s helping.

For me, it comes down to the line art. If my ink isn’t the way I want it, it makes my drawing look different. I’m still trying to perfect the texture and attributes of my inking. Line thickness variation makes a difference too

I find that practising my 'CSI' lines has been helping me with my linework, as well as taking it slow(ish) when I find that I'm struggling in a specific section (usually the roundish parts). It really helps to think of the sketch as more of a rough guide rather than something to be strictly followed too, as my more successful pieces always tend to treat the sketch as such. Great job Duck Obsessed Crane Driver, yet another banger video of yours 👍❤💕

CELESTIA POSTED!!! CELESTIA POSTED!! Also for me it's always been the opposite- my sketches look like hot garbo, and my finished pieces are generally p nice

lineart is simply a cleanup of the sketch and not a perfect redraw of it. this mindset will make you better

I discovered that a reason why my lineart where not as good is that I did them with a tool I wasn't as comfortable with as the pencil. So what I did is that I started to line with the same brush I use to sketch, and now I like most of my linearts ! x) Traditionally it doesn't work as much because pencil doesn't work as well when lining, but colored pencils can do the tricks. Watercolor on sketches is remaquably pretty tho

I think this explains why I don't hate my rendered art as much as most artists hate theirs. I finish most of my works and spend time practicing rendering using colouring pages. When I do art collabs, I do the line art and render while the other artist sketch. This means I've had roughly the same amount of practice with everything and don't have a large gap in skill between sketch and render. In addition, I don't really like the messiness of my sketch. I like neat, bold lines that define where something is. Sometimes I just jump straight to line art and call that the sketch. I do hate the obvious mistakes in my finished pieces that I completely miss during sketching but it's a much smaller part compared to everything else. I can see why other artists feel differently about their own art.

I'm learning to embrace experimentation in my art more, especially in my sketch book work. I use a mix of whatever I have on hand to line and color with, ei cheap alcohol markers, crayons, colored pencils, and dollar store lining pens, and it's made me feel a lot happier with my finished work. The most recent piece I finished, I absolutely loved the results of, and a lot of other folks I know also really liked the end result. not gonna go on a whole thing about wabi sabi, I'm sure most people have heard/read their fill from plenty of others.

As an artist who spended most time practicing painting for years, because my mum’s best friends where a couple of painters, and she would drop me off in their studio every week for like 3 years, way before I ever knew of digital art, I always prefer my finished pieces to my sketches now. When I started digital art in 2021 the internet tricked me to belive, sketch>lineart>colors>render was the “correct” way to do digital art, and I hated it. Doing lineart was always flustrating to the point I stopped trying digital art for a year, practiced more painting and some pencil drawings with models, and last year I finally saved enough for an ipad so I tryied digital art, but I used the techniques I would use for painting (slowly building blocks into more definite shapes) and now I love digital art!

I FEEL this! My traditional paper sketches are just miles better than anything I draw on my tablet. And it’s SO frustrating

I draw with traditional graphite pencils on paper, however being a student meant that my art supplies are bare-bone at best. Drawing a sketch then erasing to do lineart leaves behind very eye-twitching smudges, making it very hard to get those crisp neat lines where I want it to be, I never really sketch nor line, I just do both at once. If I get an idea in my head, I'll roughly draw it on a piece of note and then begin to drawing process right away once I'm happy with the composition. No sketches, no linearts, just draw. I try to minimize the amount of times I have to erase then draw on a single detail or two, if it's good enough, it's good enough, as all I look for is a piece that would make me feel content when I swiftly look at it rather than having to zoom in to appreciate the small details.

Explains some of of my views on writng!

I used to have mindset that if I can't made neat line and perfect artwork, my art is not good. But that just made my potential limited to a certain level. Now as I slowly work on my piece and practice overtime I tried to be more flexible and just forgive the mistake I made to not hyperfixated on them intensely. I'd say I'm achieving a level where I'm satisfied with my skill

I caught this video a bit late, but yeah, I usually end up not liking my finished pieces at times, because I loose the shape or maybe the eyes don't look the way I want them to, etc after I've added color. A way I've started combating this is relearning the basics, but with a bit more complexity added. For one I'm learning how to make the shapes of my bodies more precise, in doing so I've been looking at things like morpho or artists with more complicated styles and parts that set up to make better formed shapes and faces. It's been forcing me to rethink how I draw and make it harder for me to mess up on renders. I've also been looking into relearning shading and skin tones with the same flavor of complexity. Mixing up certain ways someone may draw a nose or set up the structure of a face for what best suits me.

Skechers we have different versions and have light weight as well like it scratches or sometimes it looks like it's more like define and with the cleanup people forget to add that extra line weight to it for exceeding a certain things depending on what style you're doing so basically it's a line wait haven't watched the video but I know exactly what it's going to be it's just flying weight

Good research! I especially like sketchy art styles. xD

If you don't like how your lineart turns out then color. Your. Sketch! It's serious a game changer! And if your sketch is too messy clean it up a bit before but I'm telling you it saves time and gives you a better outcome overall if you have this problem. It's not for everyone though but still you should test it out and experiment with different things

See, I don't think my sketches necessarily look better than my finished renders, but they did offshoot into another rendering style that I love. I use ProCreate, and use Little Pine as my sketching brush and it really does give my sketches a very messy outline look to them, which contrasts with my finished renders having very clean outlines and cell shading.

Great video❤

oh, i had a really bad case of hating finished art while liking sketch when i was drawing traditionally. then i got my first tablet and spent some time messing around and figuring out what kind of art i enjoy making. and the thing is, i really liked how my lineart looked, but boy, did the process stresses the fuck outta me. even if i just clean up my sketch and use it as a lineart, my inner masochist- i'm sorry, inner perfectionist just screams in agony from having to clean the same spots over and over and over again. eventually i gave up on lineart and therefore sketching in a traditional sense and now i start my work from blobs of colors to then refine them into more readable shapes. i'm not a sculptor, but it feels like it, like i'm meddling with shapes and forms until it looks pretty. drawing became so much more fun, but, obviously, my art looks different now, so there's still a long road of accepting my new ways and polishing them until they reach my past ways or surpass them altogether. it's just happens when you change your style. anyway, thank you for the video! even if i don't do lineart anymore, it was still interesting to look into reasons why i struggled with it so much. a very good friend of mine does lineart, so i'll show your video to her.

I never actually got this feelings pf preferring my sketch over my finished work, I always preferred the finished one because it looks so much better I think it’s because my art style consists of messy, thick line art, which are a little sketch-like

I personally don't think I have this problem? I think my art looks, basically the same, even with lineart And I crank the stabilizer all the way up in ibis. And my android tablet, doesn't support pen pressure (I mean, there is a way to fake it in Ibis. And I could get a Sonar Pen. But I honestly don't give a crap, about pen pressure) Edit: (maybe I'll commentate on all of them, idk) I don't have a problem with the first one. Probably because I have aphantasia (which, I know the vast majority of artists don't have). So I can't compare it to the image in my head, because there is none... Kinda (the best way I can describe it, is if you close your eyes and move your hand. You know your hand is there, you even know what gestures you're doing or how many fingers you're holding up. You just can't see it I also have like, three parts of my sketching process (getting the pose down, with basic shapes and lines. Drawing the body, and then drawing the character details) So my finished sketch, is already refined

Love your videos❤

Hah, that's what you think! I hate my finished drawings AND my sketches!

You gotta make the sketch an eye bleeding color so you want to get it off your canvas as soon as possible. Works wonders for me.

The 3rd one ie actually something that I actually deal with that's why I just used the sketch as lineart instead 😭 it's fun using it and I just make the sketch disappear because I paint over it

i dunno i love the finished product a lot more than the sketch because i put more work into it than i do with the sketch, the sketch to me is just a stepping stone to get the finished result

Omg this is SO real! /gen

Insta click for me cuz I've been drawing my entire life basically and this exact thing has plagued me the last 20 years. I just hate how my pieces look with lineart, but at the same time the look I want my work to eventually look like with more practice relies on lines specifically to get the aesthetic across. So I'm in this really weird crossroad currently where I truly think technically my sketches are better than they've ever been, and my work is so damn close to looking the way I want it to before the coloring phase; but my lineart is just ever so slightly off that it actively takes away from the look of my art in my opinion. So I end up leaving basically 90% of my work unlined or straight unfinished cuz I'm just unsatisfied with my lineart. Definitely a case of me just needing to practice more or take a different approach but I feel like this video was made for me as I've just come back into drawing after taking a hiatus due to mental health and I don't want to let this curse continue to plague every sketchbook I touch 😂 You perfectly described me around the 2:50 minute mark, I get legitimate anxiety sometimes unless I truly don't care when I go to line something. The better the sketch, the higher than anxiety when I go to line it; hence most my work being unfinished. I have to force myself to go back to finish pieces and then I end up disliking them by the end which has caused me to commit to doubling down on the aesthetic appeal of my sketches, rather than just actually lining what's already on the paper. Part of it for me is also just how much I enjoy the process of sketching so much, that honestly unless I've really dedicated a deeper meaning to a piece or have become hyperfixated on it, I find myself bored with the process of lining, even coloring and shading. I've just always loved to sketch specifically and it's hard to break out of that pattern and force myself to "finish a piece" (I'm a firm believer that no artwork is ever truly finished, just abandoned) because non-artists in my real life tell me I could be really great, if only I "cleaned up" or "finished" my work; but then when I actually do exactly that I end up thinking my work looks worse than before trying to make it look more "professional". Idk, maybe part of why I personally find my art to look worse after I line it is just because I truly do enjoy the process of creation, and I follow a ton of artists with a more "sketchy" less "refined" art style as it's what I enjoy aesthetically. But that kind of art just doesn't seem to be gaining me an audience, nor is it a good foundation for a career or a portfolio; it did manage however get me accepted to a fine arts school so I gotta be doing something right somewhere.

I’m a few seconds in and I already agree

Make sketch, then use transparent sticky notes to color! ;D

For me it was that my lineart was to nice and clean. I like a more scratchy lineart for my art

9:28 true 😔

Sketchy lineart club here!

i often don't even do lineart because my sketches actually just look better LOL

Real

I hate my sketches but love mt finished art. Probably because of how rough and malformed my sketches are.

Epic

I think I have my own fifth reason. By the time I finish a piece, I’ve been staring at it for so long that I’m sick of it and probably got unmotivated towards the end. I think working on multiple pieces at once can help this, otherwise I get burnt out and start taking shortcuts just so I can call something done. Anyone else have this?

solution: dont draw lineart okay jokes aside on the rare occasion when i draw lineart, i like to lower the sketch layer to like 10% or less so i can still see the sketch but still it blends in more naturally with the background so when you zoom out the lineart looks more okay. idk if i made any sense but i hope i made some sense

I suffer from this a lot, i love my sketches and hate my lines, it never looks as nice as i want it to be so it bugs me a lot.

Same girl 😅

i hate my line art because im incapable of going through the 'design process' when sketching. by the time ive sat down to draw i can already see what i want from the finished product. im only interested in making THAT finished product. its a fucking curse.

36 seconds ago?? Let's go!!

I intentionally make really rough and shitty sketches so the line art and coloring will look better.

Most of the time it’s just poorly executed line art that makes the whole thing look off/ wrong. It’s definitely a skill in and of itself to know where to places the thinner lines against the thicker lines of a sketch- not to mention adding line weight in certain places.

Me: doesnt sketch but still cares to watch Who else doesnt sketch?

Hey everyone, off topic off the video but I was wondering if anyone has seen the whole meta ai thing. I'm super disappointed that they've been scraping images from instagram and Facebook from artists who didn't consent. This is super disappointing because so many artists use Instagram

hard agree lmao

Hey, I know that this isn't really related to the video, but your sona/character is very cute!

Lmao both the sketch and the lining suck for me

Meow

Jokes on y’all. I hate them both

just dont do lineart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! especially u. your sketchs are soo clean there is no need for lineart

Senpai notice me!! :3

why you need to make your sketch more rough so you can like your line art....