Use Line to Design Watercolor
Hound Dog Girl. Squiggly lines best express this lazy dog’s relaxed state.
I’m an over-thinker. With my painting perfectly planned, it’s the best one yet! Then, it crashes. What happened? It wasn’t a lack of planning. Just wrong planning. Get an advantage by planning paintings using solid design principles. In representational work, line is a great place to start. Some of the earliest cave drawings were done with line.
“Line is the most versatile mark you can use.”
“Line is the most versatile mark you can use. A line can be thick or thin, short or long, curved or straight, broken, suggested or implied. It can direct the eye. A line can divide, form a barrier, serve as an outline, and even suggest form”…from The Art of Designing Watercolors by Robert Lovett.
I’m using use line dominance in a watercolor painting. It’s a row of scarves. The scarves flow in the breeze. I chose curvy lines to outline the scarves. Curved lines imply movement and femininity. However, a few well-chosen straight lines provide contrast. But we’re after-line dominance. Unity is achieved when is one type of a line (straight or curvy) needs to be the “most.” The most used, seen, repeated, and that is dominance.
Let’s learn to use lines better. The ability to use the line well is a skill. A skill is learned over a long time, and it’s hard to forget. It stays with you. The good news is you don’t have to start from scratch. Let’s look at established standards. You can break these standards any way you want. Later on. First, you have to know what you are breaking.
Unity. It’s where the whole painting comes together. Is your subject jagged or squiggly, curved or straight? Are the lines broad or thin? Some of these principles overlap, but they still work.
Contrast. Are you using thick lines vs. thin lines? Short lines vs. long lines?
Dominance. One type of line needs to prevail. Are lines mostly thick? Mostly thin? Mostly curved or straight? If you’re not sure, ask a kindergartner.
Repetition. This is my favorite way to use line. I think line works well this way.
Alternation. Tall, short, tall, short,…. straight, diagonal, straight, diagonal…you get the picture.
Harmony. Think of these as pleasing patterns, like a quilt. Remember first grade, where we learned to put things together in sets. I just love brackets. Sets go in brackets. There are infinite combinations with patterns in sets. A set of tall, a set of short. On and on.
Graduation. This is a change over length. Does the line go gradually short, or gradually long, gradually short, gradually skinny, gradually fat? We see these things in nature. Think about how hair strands on your head look after a good haircut.
Balance. Remember the see-saw on the playground? If you are going for a balanced composition, it needs to “look” that way. The fancy word is “intuition.” Do both sides of the drawing look equal or unequal in some way? If they are unequal, does it still look OK?
Line dominance can provide unity. How do you decide what is dominant? Take a clue from your subject matter and what is happening around it. Is your subject lounging like a sleeping dog on a sofa? Are her muscles taught as she points to a bird on the hunt? Then run with what you see and make your underlying drawing straight or squiggly, curved or straight. Does horizontal or vertical best express the feelings you want your viewer to receive? If you choose dominance using line, make one line the most used line in the painting. Refer to my watercolor journal entry Hound Dog Girl an example of curved lines.
The mist is clearing. You now have tools to plan better paintings. Most of my art turns out fair to middling, but I keep trying. According to Austin Kleon, “you can move from the mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.” So let’s encourage each other to do something. Plan something. Let’s plan on better lines in our paintings.
Scripture Meditation Verse:
“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.” Proverbs 22:29