Ligne claire

Ligne claire (French for "clear line") is a style of drawing pioneered by Hergé, the Belgian creator of The Adventures of Tintin. It uses clear strong lines all of the same width and no hatching, while contrast is downplayed as well. Cast shadows are often illuminate. Additionally, the style often features strong colours and a combination of cartoonish characters against a realistic background. All these elements together can result in giving strips drawn this way a flat aspect. The name was coined by Joost Swarte in 1977.

Hergé started out drawing in a much looser, rougher style which was likely influenced by American comic strip artists of the late 1920s and 1930s, such as Gluyas Williams and George McManus. However the precise lines which characterize most of his work, are firmly in place from early on (e.g.: the colored version of The Blue Lotus (released in 1946) is based on the original black and white newspaper version from 1934–35 and not redrawn). For Hergé, the style was not limited to the drawings but extended to the story: the plot must be straightforward. Much of the "Brussels school" started to use this style, notably Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor, Roger Leloup, and Jacques Martin, many of whom also worked for Tintin magazine.

The ligne claire style achieved its highest popularity in the 1950s, but its influence started to wane in the 1960s and was seen as old-fashioned by the new generation of comic book artists. In the late 1970s, it experienced a resurgence of interest, largely due to Dutch artists like Joost Swarte and Theo van den Boogaard, who had come up through the Dutch underground comics scene, as well as the French artist Jacques Tardi. Henk Kuijpers was also successful in his application of the style.

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