Me gripping my collection of fountain pens

How to Loosen up your Sketching Lines

Looser lines can help create expressive sketches, and there are a number of techniques that are easy enough for beginner sketchers to practice. Here’s four different areas to work on, that will help you create loose lines:

1. Letting go of your grip
2. Letting go of control
3. Letting go of your usual pen
4. Letting go of completed lines

1. Letting Go of Your Grip

We learnt tight pen grips as kids, which is great for maintaining control of creating legible handwriting, but this grip isn’t ideal for creating loose lines. So here’s some quick tips for loosening up how you grip your pen for sketching. Give them all a try and see which one/s you feel most comfortable adopting:

• Grip your pen further up the barrel
• Use an overhand grip rather than the traditional grip of thumb and forefinger and using your middle finger as a rest for your pen. This reduces the angle of your pen which helps with broader, looser strokes
• Keep a traditional grip, but don’t grip your pen as tightly, and you’ll automatically have less control of your lines.
• Sketch from your shoulder not your wrist by not resting your hand on your paper and allowing your whole arm to move. This will give you a broader scope of movement to create sweeping lines. (You may find it easier to use your pinky finger as a little bit of support as you sketch).

2. Letting Go of Control

Adjusting the speed you sketch can help you focus less on line precision and more of the expressive nature of the lines you create.

If you need an extra incentive, try setting a timer, and keep to the time limit. This not only creates more line fluidity, but it helps focus your attention on which elements are important to capture, and what aspects you can simplify or omit completely.

Don’t worry if you run out of time—an unfinished sketch is just another way to give a sketch a loose feeling.

3. Letting Go of your Usual Pen

Different pens create different lines, and finding the ideal pen for your sketching style can be an inky rabbit hole. During my sketching journey I’ve experimented with Lamy Safari, Pilot Parallel, and Sailor Fude.

I like them all, and the line width variety they can create, but recently I bought a Hongdian M2 mini fountain pen with an extra fine nib. And this purchase has really helped me adjust how I hold my pen which has loosened up my lines.

The Hongdian M2 has a short barrel, so it’s ideal as a travel sketching pen, and because it’s made of aluminum it feels even heavier than the longer plastic pens I have. That weight helps to give it some stability in your hand, and its shorter length (when it’s uncapped) means it’s comfortable to use with an overhand grip, and functions as an extension of my index finger.

I’ve been using it in conjunction with the parallel and fude pens so that I have a line-width variety. So I haven’t let go of all my usual pens, but I’ve definitely broken my reliance on them as the sole sketching pen.

4. Letting Go of Completed Lines

As somebody who is quite a precise person, my natural tendency is to sketch in complete lines and join up all the ends. But when I’m doomscrolling other people’s art on Instagram, I love the look of a half-finished sketch where a line just trails off and there’s areas of a contoured outline missing.

I’ve seen enough of these now (it’s amazing how many you notice when it’s a style you covet!) to realise that as long as you’re successful in capturing the main gesture or convey the verb, then it’s ok to stop sketching. If you’ve captured what you want to say with less line – and continuing the line doesn’t add anything else to the story you’re trying to tell, then all it’ll do is dilute the impact of your sketch.

Here’s an example of an “unfinished” sketch, that captures the posture so beautifully, even though one leg was only partially sketched, and the verb in the scene is glaringly obvious (another doomscroller!).

If you scroll across to the second image in this Instagram post, you’ll see how the Alfredo has added watercolour to the other leg without lines, in order to complete the posture. Because the front leg has a continuous line and the back leg only has a partial line, he’s able to accentuate a sense of depth in the front leg because there’s a higher level of line detail.

Lose Your Lines

If you’re a bit reticent to leave lines unfinished and miss off limbs or body parts from your people sketches, then a good alternative is to lose your lines. This technique is where you leave gaps in your lines, which helps prompt a feeling of looseness in a sketch.

The easiest way to determine where to leave gaps in your lines, is to look at where the light is hitting the subject or object you’re sketching. If there’s a highlight on an area of the face or clothing for example, and you add a solid line around that area, it diminishes the value of that highlight. But if you leave a gap in your line, then that highlight is accentuated. When you do this, it makes your sketch seem lighter and airier.

Why Sketching Looser isn’t Enough

There’s more to sketching looser than adjusting your grip and changing your pen. It’s a great start, but if you don’t make adjustments to how to observe differently, then you’ll just end up with a tight sketch with wobbly lines, and that just looks odd.

When it comes to developing a looser style, start by experimenting with different pens, different grips, and different ways to move your pen across your paper. Then it’s time to dial-up your observation skills to not just loosen up your lines, but create sketches bursting with expression by really looking at what is intriguing or interesting other than you, and leaving out the elements that don’t.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to loose sketching. Loose sketching has been my quest for a while, and I’m forever absorbing inspiration and styles I want to experiment with.