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Ligne claire (French:[liɲ(ə)klɛːʁ]; Dutch:klare lijn[ˈklaːrəˈlɛin]; both meaning "clear line") is a style ofdrawing created and pioneered byHergé, the Belgian cartoonist and creator ofThe Adventures of Tintin. It uses clear strong lines sometimes of varied width and nohatching, while contrast is downplayed as well. Cast shadows are often illuminated, and the style often features strong colours and a combination of cartoonish characters against a realistic background. The name was coined byJoost Swarte in 1977.[1]
Hergé started out drawing in a much looser, rougher style which was likely influenced by Americancomic strip artists of the late 1920s and 1930s, such asGluyas Williams[2] andGeorge McManus. However the precise lines which characterize most of his work are firmly in place early on (e.g. the colored version ofThe Blue Lotus, released in 1946, is based on the original black and white newspaper version from 1934 to 1935 and not redrawn).[3] Ligne claire was also influenced by Japan'sshin-hanga style, one aspect of theJaponisme movement that swept Europe after the opening up of Japan to European influence in the 1860s.
Much of the "Brussels school" started to use this style, notablyEdgar P. Jacobs,Bob de Moor,Roger Leloup, andJacques Martin,[3] many of whom also worked forTintin magazine.
Theligne 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 toDutch artists likeJoost Swarte[3] andTheo van den Boogaard, who had come up through the Dutch underground comics scene, as well as the French artistJacques Tardi.Henk Kuijpers was also successful in his application of the style.
Throughout the 1980s,Yves Chaland,Ted Benoit,Serge Clerc andFloc'h relaunched theligne claire style in France. This incarnation was a very stylistic and artistic variation, which the artists also utilized for illustrating posters and LP covers etc. Swarte dubbed this variant "atoomstijl" ("atomic style").[4][5]
Contemporary use of theligne claire is often ironic or post-modern. For example, Van den Boogaard used the simple, clear style to set up a conflict with the amorality of his characters, while Tardi used it in hisAdèle Blanc-Sec series to create a nostalgic atmosphere which is then ruthlessly undercut by the story. A recent serious clear line artist is theDutchmanPeter van Dongen, who created theRampokan series about theDutch colonisation of Indonesia.
Ligne claire is not confined toFranco-Belgian comics. It has also been popular with Italian artists such asVittorio Giardino,[3] Spanish artists such asPaco Roca andFrancesc Capdevila Gisbert ("Max"), British artists such asMartin Handford,Bryan Talbot andGaren Ewing, Norwegian artists such asJason, American artists such asChris Ware,Geof Darrow,Jason Lutes,Charles Burns,Jason Little, and Italian-Australian artists such as Ilya Milstein.
In 2022, the firstmonograph entirely dedicated to the clear line,The Clear Line in Comics and Cinema: A Transmedial Approach, by Portuguese scholar David Pinho Barros, was published byLeuven University Press in the collection "Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels".
