: Does anyone know what style of illustration this is called? I've seen this style a lot and want to learn it myself. Do you create such illustrations with a tablet or free-hand at your computer?

@Sent7350415

This is a line drawing. If that sounds obvious, I don't believe there's a more focused name for the technique this uses, which is coloured lines and simplified, rounded gestures with few harsh angles.

It really just describes that you shouldn't expect to see any solid areas of colour (though artists, forever challenging styles, may draw the cheeks as solid) and that, typically, the detail can be more simplistic than some other renderings but this isn't a requirement or certain.

You may find someone offering a more contemporary genre it could be placed under but I don't think anything more accepted amongst illustrators has emerged as a name for a collection of gestures like this.

In regards to how it was done:

The uniform line thickness and unwavering, even, strokes give away that this was done in a vector drawing application (Illustrator, etc.).

The lines in this are so simple in detail and, with the slight sense that they were dictated with bezier curve handles, I would wager it was done with a mouse. But it could have been done with a tablet. If it was, it may have been reduced/simplified in detail after the tablet strokes were done - whether that was done manually or automated (Adobe Flash, for example, used to automatically simplify lines that were drawn by tablet into a more rudimentary form, not unlike this).

Advice

I will add that you should avoid a mouse or trackpad altogether. It's just not a done thing with anybody who is accomplished in illustration. There's typically two trains of direction with illustrators these days:


Start and finish the drawing with a tablet at a computer
Start the drawing on paper and then finish it with a tablet at a computer


If you are still new to this, you will set yourself up better using method (2) until you are comfortable to do (1), or choose never to do (1) at all. If you jump into (1) you may find it's working for you but it's easy to pick up bad habits that you won't be aware you missed. In fact, many would argue that you should be doing (3), which I didn't mention: staying away from digital entirely until you're comfortable on paper but perhaps that's already the case.

I would also (and I really can't stress how important this is) not let the computer or software dictate a style, or whether it's digital or on paper or any other material. Find what you want to produce, then find any means of doing it in the medium you're working in and don't waiver to shortcuts if it means sacrificing the quality of the outcome.

By this, I mean that if you Google line drawings and find most are done on paper and not what you want to achieve, be sure you want to have lines that have uniform thickness and simple gestures. Is it because the software you're using makes it easy to do that or is it because that's absolutely the outcome you want, no matter how easy or difficult it was going to be to achieve?

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