La Ligne Claire

My friend Stefan in France alerted me to the concept of the "La ligne claire" (The clear line) style, something I was not familiar with at all - but now makes a lot of sense to me.

The main focus of this style is to achieve clean, neat line drawings, with few or no shadows and images are distilled to include only the essential elements needed to communicate the idea efficiently. Hergé, Tintin's father, is considered the master and somehow the creator of the ligne claire style. His work inspired many illustrators, designers and comics book artists. This style is also considered uniquely North-European only - France, Belgium (the mother nation of comics) and the Netherlands.

Sometimes the search for clarity and precision in my work urges me to redraw each piece 5 or more times before the image becomes acceptable. Individual lines are also changed several times before I am happy with the line quality.

I am sure this urge is not unique to my work. It is a time consuming and often paralyzing way of drawing for me, but now I understand the frustration that often happens more clearly. In fact, many drawings are abandoned and very few make it to the final stage.

Read more:
La ligne claire on Wikipedia