The Nearer Line Never Breaks
Hand it a photograph and it comes back as pure line — no tone anywhere, and depth carried entirely by which line stops where two things overlap, because that is the only thing a line drawing has left. Two fields.
One treatment, two different photographs. A bicycle against a brick wall and a stack of books with glasses across it — one picture full of background, one with almost none, and the difference decides how well the drawing reads small.
Naming the interruption rule is enough to get it. In both runs every overlap resolves the right way and does so consistently: the brick wall's mortar lines stop dead at each frame tube and start again past it with a clean gap, the book edges stop at the glasses' rims, the spine lines stop at the mug. Nothing crosses anything, and there is no grey, no fill, no hatching and no stipple in either — the depth is carried by interruption alone, which is the whole claim. Line weight held too: measured across the bicycle drawing it runs 1 to 2 pixels everywhere and does not grade with distance, so nothing was pushed back by fading it. The failure is elsewhere and it is worth knowing before you choose a photograph. The body says a texture becomes its edge or nothing, and the wall came back drawn brick by brick — several hundred extra lines that are individually correct and collectively turn the top half of the picture into a grey field at thumbnail size. The books run, which has almost no background, has none of that problem. If the drawing has to read small, photograph the subject against something plain, or expect to be told what the wall is made of.
Generated for this library
Input
Depth the near pedal and crank, then the frame,
order then the far wheel, then the wall
Line one even weight throughout, about as thick
as a spoke, with rounded ends
Photograph bicycle.png (1254 x 1254)
Returned 1 image · 1:1 · the bicycle as line
tone none - no grey, no fill, no hatching, no
stipple, white ground throughout
overlaps held everywhere: every mortar line stops
dead at a frame tube and starts again past
it, with a clean gap
weight even - 1 to 2 px across the picture, and it
does not grade with depth
detail the wall was drawn brick by brick, which the
body says a texture should not be
words none, in any scriptYou fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The depth order, nearest first
- 2The line
The Nearer Line Never Breaks
What this makes
Hand it a photograph and it comes back as pure line — no tone anywhere, and depth carried entirely by which line stops where two things overlap, because that is the only thing a line drawing has left. Two fields.
You are given ONE photograph. Return ONE image: that photograph as a line drawing. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.
First — do you have the photograph and the fields?
Say what this makes before you ask anything, in one or two sentences of their own words. Someone who has just pasted this has no idea what they are being asked for, and questions arriving cold are questions answered badly.
If no photograph is attached, stop and ask for one. This draws a particular picture; there is nothing to draw without it.
If either field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put both questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then work. Never fill a brace yourself.
Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.
If the photograph is attached and both fields are filled in, ignore this and carry on.
Fields — replace these two lines only
- The depth order, nearest first: {the things in the picture, front to back}
- The line: {its weight, whether it varies, and how it ends}
The law everything else follows from
Everything about how the subject is drawn may change. Nothing about what is in it may.
The rendering becomes line. What is in the picture does not move: same subject, same angle, same arrangement, same number of things, same relative sizes, same depth order. It is that photograph, drawn.
There is no tone, so depth comes from interruption
This is the whole rewrite. A line drawing has thrown away everything that normally carries depth: shading, colour, blur, atmosphere. One thing is left, and the sources never name it.
Where two things overlap, the nearer one's outline runs straight through and the further one's outline stops at it.
- The nearer line is continuous. It does not thin, break, dot or give way at the crossing.
- The further line ends cleanly a hair short of it, leaving a visible gap, and starts again a hair past on the other side.
- This happens at every overlap in the picture, in the order the first field gives, all the way to the back.
- Nothing crosses anything. Two lines that cross say the two things are in the same place.
Read the depth order and apply it overlap by overlap. It is the entire illusion, and it is the only one available.
No tone, in any disguise
- No grey, no fill, no gradient, no shadow, no blur.
- No hatching, no crosshatching, no stipple, no dots. These are tone drawn with a pen and they are not allowed here.
- No fading a line to push it back. A far line is the same strength as a near one; it is simply interrupted more often.
- Every mark is a line at the weight the second field names, on bare ground.
The line obeys one rule
- Whatever the second field says, it says everywhere. One even weight means one even weight in the foreground and the background alike.
- If it varies, it varies by a stated rule — heavier on the outside contour, lighter inside — and that rule holds across the whole drawing.
- Ends and joins are consistent: all rounded or all square, all meeting or all open.
- Lines are confident and single. Not sketched, not repeated, not furry.
Detail goes by the line, not by the pen
- To simplify, remove a whole line. Never draw a small thing with a fainter or thinner mark.
- A texture becomes its edge or nothing. Brick, fur, gravel and fabric have no lines of their own unless one edge of them matters.
- Small features become one closed shape or are left out.
- The count of things stays right. Detail may go; objects may not.
Never
- Text, numerals, a signature, a caption or a watermark anywhere, in any script.
- Colour fills, tinted backgrounds, drop shadows or glows.
- A border, a frame, a circle around the subject, or a mock-up.
- Lines that cross where two things overlap.
- A subject the photograph did not contain.
What it should read as
A drawing that could be cut, stitched or stamped as it is — and that still tells you what is in front of what.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Attach the photograph and paste the template in the same message.
- Replace the two FIELDS lines. List the depth order nearest first, in as many steps as the picture actually has.
- Check one overlap closely. The nearer line should be continuous and the further line should stop with a clean gap at it — not cross it, and not fade.
- Look for grey, hatching or stipple. All three are tone smuggled back in, and all three mean the run did not trust the line.
What you swap
- The depth order, nearest first
- the near pedal and crank, then the frame, then the far wheel, then the wall
- The line
- one even weight throughout, about as thick as a spoke, with rounded ends
Before it runs
- A photograph, attached to the message, in which things overlap. A picture with no overlaps has nothing for this rule to act on and comes back flat.
- A depth order you have worked out. It is the first field and it is the whole drawing: get it wrong and the result reads as a tangle rather than an object.
- A subject with an outline worth having. Things known by their shape survive this; things known by their colour or their surface do not.
- Acceptance that the picture goes quiet. Line drawings lose weather, texture, material and mood, and keep structure.
When to reach for it
When something has to survive being printed at one colour on anything: a stamp, an icon, a T-shirt, an embroidery file, a laser cut, a wall vinyl. Templates in this genre ask for minimal line art and hand back a drawing with shading in it, which is the one thing that makes a line drawing not a line drawing.
What changes
- One photograph in, one line drawing out — line and nothing else, no fill and no shading.
- At every overlap the nearer thing's outline runs unbroken and the further one's stops dead at it, which is what makes flat lines read as depth.
- Line weight follows one stated rule across the whole drawing instead of drifting.
- Detail is dropped by removing whole lines, not by making them fainter.
- One image, no type, no border, no grey.
Pairs with
- A Line at a Constant HeightHand it a photograph and it comes back as contour lines — every line a closed loop at one depth, none of them crossing, none of them stopping in mid-air, with the spacing doing all the shading. Two fields.
- A Grade Moves No ShadowHand it a snapshot and it comes back graded — a named contrast curve, a named colour split, halation and grain — with every object, every shadow and the whole framing exactly where they were. Two fields.
- A Hole Has No Focal PlaneHand it a photograph and it takes the picture again through a pinhole — no lens, so nothing is ever truly sharp and nothing is ever more blurred than anything else, with the corners falling away because of simple geometry. Two fields.