Line Art Tutorial & Styling

June 10, 2020

While we’re still under lockdown restrictions in Melbourne and around the world, we love looking for ways to be creative and find beauty at home in these coming winter months. One of the things we’ve been doing is trying new trends we’ve seen by other creators. To see how to create pressed flowers, click here. To watch a video on how to create your own air dried clay pieces, click here.

We spent a cosy, rainy morning at S-kin Studio trying our hand at some line art, a minimalistic form of drawing that uses straight and curved lines to create a form against a blank canvas. It’s fun, really simple, and we’ve created a tutorial here on the S-kin Studio blog to show you how we did it and give you some inspiration for styling your own line art in corners of your home.

What you’ll need:

Charcoal sticks, pastel or acrylic crayons in neutral colours. You can also use pen if that’s more your style!
White paper or card. We use mindful paper by Planet Ark, which is 100% Australian recycled.
Setting spray (we used hairspray!) to set the charcoal/pastels and stop it from smudging.
Frames of your choice

Gather your materials

Gather your materials together and find a clean working space. Make sure it is cleared of anything that can be smudged by the charcoal or pastel dust.

Find some inspiration!

You can use photos, jump on pinterest, instagram or wherever you get inspired. You can copy an actual line drawing or if you’re feeling brave, create your own based on a photograph. The best line art has a mixture of lines and curved shapes, so angular shapes (like a house, for example) won’t work as well.

Get drawing!

You can use several different techniques to create your line art. The most popular one is not lifting your pen/charcoal off the paper throughout the entire drawing, creating form from a continuous line. This creates a beautiful flow within your artwork. Alternatively, you can use long sweeping brushstrokes to create a similar look. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try a variety of styles!

Final touches

Once you’re happy with your drawing, you can use your finger to run along the charcoal line to create a smooth smudged look, or leave it alone to keep it more textured. Spray a light spray of your setting spray over the entire picture, then leave it for a minute to dry. Shake off any excess.

Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to frame it. Pop it into a frame of your choice - we used these minimalistic white frames from IKEA.

Styling your line art

We’ve styled our line art in two different settings, one on a bedside table and the other in our studio. Don’t be afraid to get creative - we used a mixture of dried floral bouquets, pampas grass, perfume bottles, S-kin Studio Jewellery styled on jewellery stands and shells.