Hate to ask but how do you do your lines? In love with them
would also love to know what brushes you use if it’s fine to ask
I'll answer the last half to better answer the first half of your ask!
While I revolve or go through phases, my bread and butter for lining is the MaxU 600 Series Pencil from the gouache Max Pack. It allows a lot of control over how opaque, thick or thin I want my line work to be. I'm also very picky about how my lines look, and if it's too digital feeling, I get ick. So I gravitate toward the pencil texture.
Other stapes are the sharp render from Jingsketch for great general use in blocking in colors + gradients, and the watercolor Maxpack is responsible for a lot of my texture and coloring.
As for the specifics of my line process: line variation and black spotting are almost how I "see," if that makes sense? Inking was the first thing that hooked my mind when looking at art. I remember wanting to become the best at it. Many of my art inspirations incorporate heavy, expressive, or intricate linework.
And shading is my least favorite step. It always looks muddy to me and I tend to be very biased toward flat colors. So to mitigate how much work I have to do in the shading/coloring department, I usually always aim for a level of dimension and volume in the linework to the point where if there was only flat colors, you could still tell a form of light logic (gradients help a lot too). In my brain, lining is almost a type of shading.
Regardless, once I'm happy with my lines, I usually use a gaussian blur on a duplicated line art layer. Then that blur layer gets an overlay layer mode (although sometimes it's darker color/soft light/multiply, whatever effect I want).
The 600 pencil gets particularly awesome here because usually when I do this blur layer, it lights up some of the less opaque parts of the lines. So with the red blur on overlay, it gives my lines warmth and luminosity, like it's glowing.
A bit long winded, but thank you for the ask! It's nice to talk about process--it helps to remind me of where I come from, artwise. I hope this was helpful!
