Back to School Monday: Line

Good morning!

It's Back to School Monday! Remember when I said I'd do a post for each of the elements and principles of design? In honor of Back to School?

I didn't forget. So here's this morning's post. It was supposed to be all about Space, which was first on my list, but being the dingy person I am, I skipped Space and went right to Line.

That's OK because I LOVE this illustration of line. I'm pretty excited about it.
I was sketching in my book the other day, trying to come up with a fun, cute letter H for my ongoing Monogram project.

I like ongoing projects.

I have a lot of them. It drives my husband crazy. But for some reason my brain gets tired of a project before I can finish it, so I keep a big rotation of them. That way I keep from getting bored. And usually the ones that are really worth my time, eventually get finished. The other ones just languish in totes in my closet, or forgotten file folders on my computer, until I clean everything out about once every 5 years or so.

Anyway.

Line.

It's a bit of a challenge to work with just line all by itself. You want to add colors, or filled-in shapes, or SOMETHING.

I started with this sketch from my falling-apart sketch book:
As I said, the letter H. I love something that is also something else. Like a bird sitting on a branch, that is also the letter H!
I started to make a bigger sketch...
...and refine that sketch. A few times.

Then I traced it in pen. I messed up a couple times.
Eventually, though, I got it.
Holy. Cow. So. Stinkin' Cute.

I might name my next child an H name just so I can put this in his or her room.

Just kidding. Maybe.

What I ought to do is a whole alphabet along this theme.

Anyway, I think that the key with LINE is that you have got to do SOMETHING with it to avoid making it look flat and totally boring.

There are a few ways to do this, but I think that the best, most fun way is to vary the thickness of the line. It's a little bit more subtle in this illustration, but you can see it. With my illustrations, a lot of times I like to add a thick line around the outside of the illustration. It's a trick I learned from all those Disney movies I watched as a kid.

There is definitely something totally great about forcing guidelines upon yourself once in a while. I don't have a lot of constraints in my life when it comes to design, so it's good to make myself step back and follow a few guidelines sometimes.

And, now, lucky you! My baby just woke up so that puts an end to today's post.

Go make your own line piece, I dare ya!