Ligne Claire Comic Strips – Emily

Exploring Ligne Claire Through Comic Strips

Click the fullscreen button in the image to fully explore my virtual gallery! (Shared with Wriley Hodge & Onaje Grant-Simmonds)

You should be able to access the gallery above (it may take a few minutes to load). You can also use this link https://www.artsteps.com/view/5ed01da0ee9d76564b341fda

My name is Emily Nally, and I am a 17-year-old artist who grew up in Hoboken, NJ. I am currently attending Elisabeth Irwin High School in Lower Manhattan and will attend Northeastern University in Boston, MA this fall. Throughout high school, I have explored many aspects of visual arts, including drawing, painting, printmaking, and ceramics. Along with my high school art curriculum, I participated in the 2019 Architecture Pre-College Program at Pratt College in Brooklyn, NY.

This gallery consists of my work made during Senior Project, a 6-week independent project period, where I focused on using maquette set ups to produce comic strips. My process began by brainstorming various “story-lines” that I could communicate with only a few panels and without words. I would then loosely thumbnail various compositions per scene by changing angles, objects, and figures within the maquettes to find the right composition that best communicated the story. Throughout the process, I would mostly work with pencil and paper, from drawing the thumbnails and maquettes, to adding in details from photo references when needed. In the final stage, I would put all the panels onto Photoshop, where I would digitally color and refine details within the image. Lastly, I would compile all the panels in Photoshop into a traditional comic strip format.

This collection of my work shows a small glimpse of a fun, lighthearted animal world. These characters live an easy yet strange life where their animal side often shines through. Though my work presents as a short and simple cartoon, I was heavily inspired by Hergé, Jean-Claude Floc’h, and Joost Swarte, and like them, worked in the style of Ligne Claire. Ligne Claire is a style created by Hergé, creator of the original Adventures of Tin Tin comics. The style employs a single line weight and flat coloring, however also includes realistic shadows and color temperature. Ligne Claire has the ability to communicate depth while staying flat and cartoon-like, which makes the style much more sophisticated than many initially believe.

Throughout Senior Project, I deeply explored the style of Ligne Claire and experienced the excitements and challenges of working in a studio space full-time. Though my high school art experience is coming to an end, I am looking forward to what the future holds!