What Makes a Line Beautiful?

Looking at Ronald Searle’s drawings makes you wonder, “What makes a line beautiful?” Is it the indication of a professional hand? Perhaps the line is perfectly symmetrical, never outstepping the very boundaries it has created. Perhaps the line is colorful, existing in vibrant shade of a rich reddish-brown, causing you to remember the Fall leaves all across the rows of trees along your childhood street. Or, perhaps the line isn’t perfect, starting and stopping – visible traces of where the ink ran dry. Perhaps the line is squiggly, childish, thick, thin, blotchy, clean, jagged, strong, or even nervous. A line, much like our own handwriting, is an incredibly expressive mark on the page. Well, as is any mark on a page. Of course, writing is a combination of lines, however, a singular line representing nothing is hard to consider as something worthy of any judgment because there is no tangible meaning attached to the line.

But if the variety of handwriting habits, or perhaps, even the variety of letters or words across the slew of languages is any indication of the range of beauty a line can take, then consider the fact that a line need not be restricted by the boundaries of language alone. Although art is itself a type of language, we can nonetheless perceive it as boundless.

Perhaps what makes Searle’s drawings so interesting to look at is because of his active use of variation. He was an artist that fully utilized the full spectrum of lines in each drawing, capturing the energy of a form effortlessly We can smell the wispy strands of grass, or hear the jagged creaking of the porch as a man plays the fiddle with a pitchfork, and in the background, can be heard, the scratching of an irritated dog.

But that is it, isn’t it? Why the line is beautiful I mean. It is because it is everything in a sense. Cities, people, animals, puffs of smoke, rain, water, intricate machines, and the words of a title card at the beginning of an animated film, all of these are composed of lines and Searle’s drawings remind us of the compositional endlessness of these deceptively simple forms. You can truly draw anything with just lines.

So, it is less about technical ability that makes a line beautiful, rather, it is about capturing the world it is depicting. It is about the potential an undrawn line has. I cannot help but feel, in an optimistic fashion, that drawing a beautiful line is les about making it perfect, but more about drawing it confidently.