Of Unthoughtful, Behavioral and Broken Lines

As drawings happen by making lines, the undercurrents influencing the behavior of their composition that is making the drawing a failure or a success also can be found in the study of the lines. For instance, one of most awkward things I have in my drawings is an unconscious habit of mine that I call the Unthoughtful Lines. They stand for the visual fallacies, imagetic mindtraps. They are inconsistent lines that happen when my hand is leaded by a rushing mind that usually ignores the Base Line Prior To Layering rule, which results in one hell of a mess.

The worst thing isn't the Unthoughtful Lines making my work look amateurish, but allowing them to happen progressively drags the whole of the skill back in quality. They prevent me from attaining Solidity and even hurts the ammount of skill carefully builded so far. So, as a mindtrap that is a menace to my most fundamental principle, it must be obliterated.

One of the ways to to avoid these are what I call using Behavioral Lines. They happen by trying to make the lines emulate the undercurrent behavior of the element they're trying to express. It's not as complex as it sounds. For instance, when drawing hair, one must try soft and curvy lines that behave the way a hairline does. And the same goes for muscles, or trees and textures in general. The idea of Behavioral Lines is giving the thing being drawn the line it needs. An Unthoughtful line usually ignores that and gives everything the amauterish flat line.

So, as a consequence of the Behavioral Line (instead of being a polarization against the flat line), I've learned that rarely, if ever, lines go straight for too long. Symmetries are exception, so machinery and architectural require a straight, rectilinear behavior. For natural behaviors one has to understand its inherent asymmetry and aesthetical randomness. For natural behavior it's important to use the Broken Line. It's a kind of line that fits Firm Grip, as it works better against hard-edged looking objects with sudden breaks, so hairlines don't usually look good with Broken Lines, though Edging (which has an influence Firm Grip in it) was born from an epiphanic realization when drawing hair. Go figure.