Post 5 - Anything!

     Have you ever noticed that the sketch you hastily drew on the back of your math homework or the barely shaded result from procrastinating at 2 am somehow manages to look better than the line art you spent hours perfecting? Well, there may be a psychological reason behind this quality disparity.

    When you are sketching, you're not aiming for perfect lines. You'll draw over a line or make multiple lines as a guide for your line art, where your perfect lines will shine. However, your brain when seeing a sketch will generalize your messy chicken scratch and interpret it as one beautiful line. 

                                       Here is a messy sketch vs what your brain really sees:

    Basically, it's hard to make a perfect line when tracing the sketch, and if you're not extremely precise, the lines will end up looking slightly skewed, potentially ruining your art. However, our brains casually combine the lines of a messy sketch into a perfect one, so people are more likely to view your sketches as having perfect lines than your line art.

    So, how can you make your line art look better without spending hours and hours ensuring each line is perfect and varying in width? Well, instead of fighting the weird ways our brains work, it might be easier to simply work with it. Knowing how our brains interpret certain patterns, such as Gestalt principles, is an invaluable skill for artists. For example, this subject doesn't have completely enclosed line art, but the lines depict the cat well because our brains automatically close the gaps. 

                                   Now just imagine how nice this would look when fully colored!