Sunday, January 28, 2024

Line Weight Hierarchy

If you draw in line, there’s a principle called line weight hierarchy. Thicker lines seem closer and more important, while thinner lines float to the background.


Examples by Charles Dana Gibson, Gustave Doré, and Alphonse Mucha at the link.

1 comment:

  1. QI remember getting into a fight with an instructor about this. I get it: line weight shows distance and weight. A feather should have a light wispy line, a rock should have a heavy line. In your example, you show three boxes or roughly the same weight, that's easy and clear to understand. In my instructor's case, he put a large box, small sphere, and medium cylinder all made of marble along with some drapery in a nice composition. Then proceeded to complain that all the students didn't understand the concept because we all drew the heavy box with a dark line. Question: you have a still life of feathers and a crinkled bedsheet 1.5 feet in front of a basketball in front of a concrete block, how do show that and what deserves the heavier line? My instructor just kept saying the feather/rock principle over and over again.

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