Word.ws English Dictionary

ligne claire

ligne claire noun: a style of drawing focusing on strong, clear shapes and bold coloring without hatching or shading; typically featuring cartoonish characters against realistic backgrounds.

ligne claire: a style of drawing focusing on strong, clear shapes and bold coloring without hatching or shading;...
Image: Ferran Cornellà, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

ligne claire (uncountable)

  1. A style of drawing focusing on strong, clear shapes and bold coloring without hatching or shading; typically featuring cartoonish characters against realistic backgrounds.

Origin of ligne claire

From French ligne claire (“clear line”), originally from Dutch klare lijn (“clear line”), originally coined by Dutch artist Joost Swarte in 1977 to describe the work of Belgian artist Hergé.

Questions about ligne claire

What does ligne claire mean?
Ligne claire means a style of drawing focusing on strong, clear shapes and bold coloring without hatching or shading; typically featuring cartoonish characters against realistic backgrounds.
What part of speech is ligne claire?
Ligne claire is a noun.

Words near ligne claire in the dictionary

  1. lignanes
  2. lignans
  3. lignase
  4. lignases
  5. ligne
  6. ligne claire
  7. lignel
  8. lignels
  9. ligneous
  10. ligneous conjunctivitis
  11. ligneously

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ligne claire (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ligne claire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ligne_claire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.