Scanning often makes the pic very grainy and it can really fuck with your colour edges when you go to paint under them.

The trick you may want to eventually learn is using no lineart at all. I at some point want to be able to scan something in, colour it and remove the linework and just use blending and contrast techniques to give me the edges I want. That's how it is in real life; we don't have lineart on things in the real world, right?

Nvmd that, I thought you were talking about scans, not photoshop sketches.

Try using line weight in your line work. It will give the image more depth and a sense of roundness.

Growing up with cartoons. I love the look of sharp, crisp lines. Especially when it comes to coloring. :)

I was thinking about something similar myself, just this morning. Used to be when I'd do a drawing I would be finished with the entire thing in just about an hour, but now it takes several hours if not sometimes days to complete, and I rarely ever color my works in anymore because the feeling is gone by the time I go to do line-art on it. I've often complained that my works a few years ago were actually better than my works of the last year or two... inking works takes it from a fun enjoyable thing to almost a mechanical activity, something to be done by a machine rather than a flesh-and-blood person...

Anyway, if you're questioning the standard method of production maybe try something that feels more right to you. It might help.

I never really line actually, for about the same reason as you... I feel it helps add something when you leave it as a sketch before colouring :)

It depends on your coloring style, but having clean lineart gives definite boundaries for coloring. The extra lines from a sketch can also be distracting, but again, it depends on your style.

I like seeing three versions of pictures- the sketch, because I like looking at the under-drawing and the shapes that don't make it to lineart; the cleaned-up lineart, possibly with flat colors applied, because it's the cleanest and easiest to pick out details; and of course, the finished piece.

And I ink because pencil smudges. And to cover mistakes. There are some pictures where I'd love to just color over the sketch, but I can't, because it would be too messy.