Take this from someone with years of drawing experience : Relying too much on precise outlines is like building a house of cards. It feels secure, but the slightest inaccuracy can easily make everything collapse. It just take a fraction of a millimeter to make your subject squint, have a lazy eye or a displaced nose. So you erase, and correct and erase and correct and it’s still off.

What if the solution was actual to stop chasing the perfect line?

It's a very different approach from last week's Newsletter but today, we'll learn how to not use a line and how to use a line that's not really a line (it's complicated, I know)

How Not to Use A Line - What Sargent Pencil Drawings Can Teach Us

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Stop Chasing the Perfect Line

What if the solution was actual to stop chasing the perfect line - what if the solution was to stop trying to put boundaries on things that - precisely - don’t have boundaries? Today we’ll explore an idea that I call the “Tonal Line.” It’s a line that isn’t really a line at all—it only exists to contribute to tone and values. It belongs to a shadow mass, not to the contour itself. Its purpose is practical, but its goal is to disappear.

This is exactly what you see in John Singer Sargent’s drawing of Mrs. Louis Ormond. At first glance, it looks linear, but look closer: the contour of the cheek dissolves into a shaded plane, the fingers are defined more by tone than by edge. His lines vibrate, shift, almost like they’re trying not to exist. And that’s the proof—the likeness holds not because the outline is exact, but because tone and value do the heavy lifting.

It's a line that tries to be anything but a line, and that's what I call : the "Tonal Line."

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Why Sargent Thought Outside the Line

Sargent was trained by Carolus-Duran (one of his paintings is the picture on the left "Portrait of Jeanne Henriot" - the image on the right is by Sargent, as a comparison), he taught him to think in values, not outlines.

With paint, he learned to push the edge from both sides—color against color, shadow against light. That same habit carried over into his drawings. Graphite, the most linear medium of all, still bends to his approach.

Look at the cheekbone here: no single “line” holds it together. Instead, a vibrating edge of tone does the work. It’s as if the line refuses to sit still—always shifting, always breathing.

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The Tonal Line Exemplified

This is where the idea of the tonal line becomes powerful. Instead of chasing a razor-thin contour, think of the line as the boundary of a larger tonal mass.

The jawline? It’s not a line—it’s the edge of a shadow plane. The eye socket? Not a neat curve, but a patch of tone merging into lighter areas. Once you see the line as tone, you stop isolating it. You integrate it. And suddenly, likeness becomes much easier—because real faces are made of value transitions, not outlines.

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Simplify, Omit All but the Essentials

Sargent was ruthless in simplification. The tonal line helped him cut away unnecessary detail.

Look at this drawing : so much detail is missing! The hair, the clothing, the details of the eye, everything is suggested in just a few strokes of charcoal. What remains? Values. The tonal lines mark what matters, and everything else dissolves into suggestion.

There is indeed a line, but it's trying to be anything but a line.

That’s because Sargent knew the secret to portraits that breathe life—focus on the big picture, and let tone, not line, carry the likeness.

More coming up this week on this topic...

Practice with this Drawing Download the Resource Plate

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Catching up with the Atelier

Here's what's been happening in the previous weeks...

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Until next time—joy and inspiration to you, my friends.

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