I never know what I'm doing. I just remember my old painting instructors were like "NO LINE! GET RID OF LINE". they were saying that 'cause line tends to flatten things out. In cartoons & comics you don't necessarily care but in a painting style you may care (or not - there are no true rules TBH).

My instructors taught that, but thankfully in the context of both establishing depth and using depth as visual contrast. Same with using black!

It was the opposite for me, I didn't understand the lineart-oriented approach until quite recently because I didn't see those lines in real-life. It's good to know these rules -or art fundamentals- exist, but we can choose not to follow them because there are no art police to catch us😄

“Learn the rules and then break them”