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OneFreeInternet — So you think tracing can't help you learn?
Published: 2009-09-26 14:45:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 19321; Favourites: 66; Downloads: 0
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Gallery | DD's I've given | Favorite DD's of All Time | Note Me | contact me:::crystal_jemm@hotmail.com | Visit me on LIVESTREAM
Watch me show you that it can.
First of all, before reading this, step off of those high horses of yours and open your mind to what I'm saying.
Are you off? Safe and unsaddled? Not tied up in the bridle? Good!
Before I start talking about tracing let me give you a bit of background information on myself. Me? I'm a very arrogant person sometimes. I often believe my way is right and always will be right, even if it's dead wrong. 
Recently I have been hating my art furiously (hence the empty gallery) so I sat for a while a couple nights ago and wondered WHY. Why do I feel my art is so amateur, and lacking, and underdeveloped for my age?
I found out the answer. My coloring is okay, I've never had any real problems with it. My drawing STINKS however. It really really stinks. Then I browsed around and realized that I wasn't the only one with this overdeveloped coloring and underdeveloped drawing skill. I saw many people with beautiful sense of color, depth, volume, yet when you remove all those fancy colors and look at the lines, they might as well be drawn by someone ten years younger than they're supposed to be. Some people even have PERFECT inking and lineart in itself but the anatomy.. Christ. Most distorted and nonsensical things I have ever seen.
The question is, how do sucky drawers such as myself remedy this? One answer is tracing.
Now before you go OMG HOW CAN CTJEMM SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT SO IS ALL HER ART TRACED OMG TRACING IS FOR PEOPLE WHO CANT DRAW AND BABIES OMG -- relax, breathe and read on.
Tracing is a learning mechanism. Plagarizing art by tracing anime screenshots, or even other people's art and posting it as your own is NOT what I am talking about. Push that element of it out of your mind and never go back to it again, it is NOT what I am referring to, and totally out of the question.
I mean tracing out of real life. Eyeballing will not help as much as tracing does, not in this case.
The first thing you must realize - People all use references.
If you ever say that "I never use references, ever!" - then frankly you're being an idiot. Even if you don't have a physical reference or picture in front of you, you imagine the shape and look of things in your mind. In your mind where do you think that comes from? It comes from memory. Memory of what? Nature. You use nature as a reference, you use real life and things around you to refer to when you draw. Still think you don't use references? If so it's okay, I had my moment like you too where I thought I was ttly original and amazings too dawg.
Now back onto tracing. Lately I've started taking stock photos and photography I find online and collecting them so I can trace them. No, I haven't posted any of these to dA, they are simply practise and are not (well not in my opinion) any kind of art fit for posting. Now I'll show you what I do with these photos. I've asked Whimsical-Dreams and vastblue for help in this little journal, and she's given me permission to use one of her beautiful photos as an example 
So I saved the picture and started tracing away. She has a very lovely body with epic proportions so it's a good example for practise.
See how useful it is to study by tracing for yourself.
1: I took the image into painter. I faded it so I could see what I'm doing, and traced the general silhouette of her body on a new layer. Yes, traced, not eyeballed. Eyeballing will just make me automatically distort the proportions prematurely because my perception of this photo is not how it literally IS. This is not what I want, so I TRACE it.
2: Now that I have the silhouette, this is where the learning starts. How many of you know about head proportions? It's a very important part of anatomy, and distorting proportions properly is only possible if you know how they go in the first place. This is what I have biggest problems with. From the trace, I learned these things.
- Whimsical-Dreams 's body can very well be a standard cartoon adult body. She is 8 and a half to 9 heads tall.
- On the 9 head tall body, the shoulder lies at 1 and a half heads.
- the breasts will range from two to two and a half heads high (from the crown of her head)
- The waist lies at 3 and a half heads.
- The hips lie at 4 heads
- The crotch lies at 4 1/2 heads to 4 3/4 heads.
- The arms when hanging down reach 5 heads.
- The knees lay at 6 1/2 heads.
- The upper arm reaches 3 1/4 heads, and
- the nose ends at halfway through her first head.
Still hate tracing with a burning passion? No worries. Read on, read on.
3: I have a basic body to work with. But let's say you don't feel like this picture is fully yours yet, as you just 'ripped' a pose off of some photo (despite how much you just learned.
) Okay so for some reason, let's change the pose. It's easier to change the pose more accurately now because we have the body shape DIRECTLY under. It's your boundaries, your guide. Eyeballing cannot compare to this type of tracing because remember I said that your perception can mislead you. To avoid that, keep your guide directly in your sight. So using that guide we just made, I drew my own pose. I moved the limbs, now that I have the correct proportions to work with, I can also distort them. Let's say I want to make a cartoon character. Character design in cartoons identify the feminine very unrealistically but no matter. Let's give her narrower shoulders, a longer yet narrower torso and bigger, more spread facial features.
4: Now that you have YOUR pose with YOUR proportions, most of all, correctly made (somewhat), You can even draw some slutty-looking animu chick with it. w @
So anyway with all this rambling my point is that tracing is not all fire and brimstone like people especially on deviantart make it out to be. I understand, tracing has a bad stigma because of how it's non-constructively used, and people associate tracing with not learning anything, and attention whoring and whatnot. But it is not all that. It doesn't have to be that at all. You can use any method to learn and I had to learn (the hard way) that tracing benefits people more than they're willing to admit. So with a little humility and change of mentality that you're too 'awesome', 'advanced' and 'too old' to trace, I hope this changes your mind. I've been drawing for years, I'm familiar with anatomy. But it needs serious improvement and tracing is helping me so much in filling in the gaps that remain. It helps, and it works. I'll continue using this mechanism to learn, because it's amazing. Personally I don't think it makes sense to trace from other illustrations, since they are already distorted in someone else's style. I don't think I can learn anything from that, as I just have a bunch of broken rules to work with. Real people, buildings, cars, and animals will help.
So next time you see someone tracing to learn, instead of flaming them to kingdom come, yelling, screaming and biting at them, why not suggest a better way to trace? Or show them how it can help them learn to make their own work instead? Community is not about hurting people and witch-hunting people off of dA if you don't agree with their methods, it means a lot more than that.
You can get back up on your high hors- whoops! it ran away!
Mini-gallery code from foundsoundfunny , thank you!
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Comments: 323
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If you can't draw, then I -really- suck at drawing... 8D
I like your art.
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I completely agree with you 
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I think so too!
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Well shit, you made my high horse ran away.
Seriously though, I've only been against tracing and posting the things you trace claiming they're yours. And tracing from illustrations as well. You said it yourself, those wont help you improve. EVER.
I never thought of tracing like you just showed here, I might do it, since I have a lot of problems with anatomy and whatnot. Thanks for sharing.
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thank you for reading love!
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totally agree i against people who copy lines and claiming as theirs but im cool with people do it as practice. i have been horrible with my drawing lately that it looks the same as the ones year ago so i dont submit because it disappoints me that i didnt improve on any aspect of drawing since high school...
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Very true. Tracing is a useful tool. Like all tools, however, it can easily become a crutch. I find the best approach to utilizing it is to balance your techniques, so as not to rely too heavily on it. When I say balance I mean balancing tracing with actually drawing from life and drawing from the minds eye. I've seen plenty of people who only get results from tracing, and plenty of people who can only draw what's in front of them, and people like me who draw best from the creative mind.
And I have to agree, too many people nowadays come off as really great colorists, but their line art isn't so hot. I've been buying less and less art at conventions because of this.
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And yea I noticed that too. everyone's a colorist these days, rarely do you see anyone taking the time to perfect their drawing skill. :/ It's sad, really.
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I wish I could fav this
I started learning this way some time ago, and it really does help~
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Alex Ross takes photo reference of people dressed up like the characters in the comics and traces them. Yup. He says so in his book "Mythology" and we all know how well off he is. He doesn't even have to tell people that because they're his photos he's tracing. He could pretend he can do that in the blink of the eye. But he tells anyone who'll listen the value of tracing.
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I am really not fond of his work for that reason. D:; His paintings all suffer from an excess of studio lighting, as well.
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i guarantee you every artist you like is either tracing now to a degree or did.
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I traced when I was a kid. I know for a fact that not every artist I like traces, because I live with one of them, and the bastard references even less than I do.
It's not so much an issue of the tracing. I sure as hell don't want to be able to tell, though. That ruins it completely. "Congratulations, Sentient Xerox."
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sorry I do not believe for a second that the person you live with has never traced. doing something without a reference is not the sign of a great artist.
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Calm down. It's nothing to get defensive over.
He used to do color studies, it's what let him get good at digital painting.
If you saw the dude's stuff, you'd understand what I meant by not tracing or really using references. He'd be tracing some really deformed people, if that was the case. He is drawing horses right now, though, and since he's not really familiar with them - he did a Google image search. He'd bring the page up, then bring Painter up, and sort of go back and forth like that.
I'm not suggesting to you that there is something fundamentally wrong with tracing or referencing. Things are never that black-and-white. I'm expressing a preference. I just don't like being able to tell how heavily something was referenced, unless it's, say, a portrait of George Washington or something. The referenced/traced look is usually stiff, and rather lacking in personality. Preference.
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im not being defensive, I'm being factual
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i have to admit that your arguments are really convincing with this matter. I used to see tracing as really bad, but now i think i will have to rewise such a point of view... the worst thing when it comes to tracing is that this method is often abused and therefore recalled as bad, not worthy. I must admit that I as a person had never felt the need to trace, beacuse i do not have much bigger problem with anatomy (or so i htink for the time being - i will probably rewise this statement soon). On the other hand my coloring is really bad, and i do not think that tracing would help me here much. Anyhow, i think this was a very interesting input into the still ongoing discussion about the good and bad of tracing.
sorry for spamming your journal with such a long rant ^^"
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I never had a problem with tracing, just taking credit for the picture someone traced is what angers me. I had a go with tracing a few times myself back then when my drawing is at a low. Now that I don't do it, maybe that's why drawing is so hard to get back into nowadays! xD
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This is what I tell most people who approach me at school/work ect. with the question, "How do you draw so well?"
My first response is nearly always, "Practice. When I started drawing, I sucked. Worse than you might think."
But when they start asking how they might do it, I usually suggest, "Find a photo you like and trace it. It will help you learn anatomy, take references from everything and at the same time create your own work. Don't be ashamed of learning, but never show off your traced works as your own. After you get a hang of anatomy, try drawing it on your own, and you'll see what happens after that."
So it's really nice to see that I'm not the only person that this type of learning worked for. In my mind, tracing for the wrong reasons is, well...wrong. Tracing an illustration, a screenshot, tracing anything directly and posting it without permission or credit isn't doing anyone any good. So this is definitely a hard point to get across and you did it splendidly. C:
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That's a really good idea, I've been needing practice like this for a while, thanks!
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It has helped me work out a few small kinks in the arms so far
Still need more practice though!
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I disagree. There's a few serious flaws here that you really need to take into consideration before suggesting tracing is a good way of learning and understanding proportions, so hear me out while I explain them.
Firstly, the "heads" rule isn't going to help much when you want to do a really dynamic and difficult pose involving serious foreshortening, and those are the kinds of poses that really make art interesting, as we don't see them often. To learn about that, you really need to use live models. Also, there are many techniques to force you to use the proportions of things that are in front of you, not just the proportions and shapes you think you see. One well-known one is the thumb rule, but the one I found most helpful (especially with extreme foreshortening) is triangulation. You determine how long one of your lines in your drawing will be, and then use angles and the endpoints of that line to determine where everything else in the drawing is. It's all math. Angles don't lie.
Now, let's assume all photos see exactly what your eye sees (a very wrong assumption, and we'll talk about that in a minute). The measurements you get from tracing a photo are only useful for one perspective and one circumstance that your characters will be in. Wouldn't it be nice if you instead knew some tricks you could use to get those tricky positions drawn right just using a minute or two of your roommate's time and a quick sketch? This is why people learn things like triangulation and the thumb rule. It's harder to learn, but easier, more accessible, and more accurate in the long run. It will serve you better, and once you've had some practice with it, it is MUCH quicker. Drawing classes force you to draw from life for a very good reason.
Now, on to the real reason why tracing is dangerous and can actually hamper your drawing. With photography, you're not seeing things as your eye sees them. You're seeing them as a camera's lens sees them. And if the lens length that was used to take the picture wasn't 50mm (and that's assuming you're working with a film camera or a camera whose sensor is full-frame - depending on how big the camera's sensor is, that number changes due to the way lens optics work), you wouldn't be seeing things as your eye does (and even that is an approximation). A shorter lens (wider-angle) will exaggerate perspective, while a longer lens (telephoto) will flatten it. You can take a look here for a good example of what different focal lengths of a camera can do to the same scene: [link] How do you know which one is right? They're all photographs, and if you blindly assume that all photographs are more reliable than your own eye, you won't always be drawing the same perspective and proportions, and in essence you're learning nothing except how to confuse yourself. And if you think that this rule doesn't apply to the human body, let's take a look at some of the basics of portrait photography (scroll down for photo examples): [link] How do you know, when you grab a photo off the internet, which face is the right face? They're all the same face, all taken at the same time, but with different lens lengths - and significantly different proportions. They're not what your eye sees. The image is always manipulated according to what the photographer wanted you to see. In this way, tracing a photo is no better than tracing a drawing, as you are still basing your drawings off distorted work.
Use your eyes. It's hard, but it's correct. It'll serve you better in the long run. If you're really serious about improving your drawing, I suggest you either take a life drawing class or take a look at this article, which explains triangulation from an artist's perspective: [link] There are very sound reasons why people say tracing doesn't really help you improve, and trust me, it's not because we're all pompous jackasses who can't understand how hard it is to draw from life. It's WAY hard. I still suck at it. But at least it's consistent, and I know eventually I'll learn to get it right without constantly referencing a model.
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You actually have very interesting points. Sadly, a lot of people don't have the opportunity to take life drawing classes so a photography is the next best thing they can use for their references.
Still, I'll take a look at that article about triangulation. Looks interesting.
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I realize that. It sucks. 
If you have a roommate or friend who is interested in drawing, you can take turns modeling and sketching and critique each other, and even if it's not nude, it's still really helpful.
Learning about triangulation is seriously the best thing that has ever happened to me. I could never get the hang of the thumb rule. But after a little practice with triangulation, you can really get some awesome reference sketches in just a few minutes to use in later works when you're not going to be able to have a model around. Plus, most people will be okay with sitting still for five minutes or so. To get quick at it, you can start practicing with stuff that won't move around, like furniture. The thumb rule is nice for checking it, because sometimes you can get the angles wrong, but it will put you in the right area. And I can't even imagine doing any weird perspectives without triangulation anymore.
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I'll take all those things into account. Thank you!
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I agree with you completely! Also, you can't fully understand the lighting in a photograph as opposed to what you see in real life.
I used to be very close-minded about these things, until I took a few life drawing classes as well as an instructed portraiture class. My teacher basically said everything you said and really encouraged drawing from life as a means to learning how to draw accurately. And she was vehemently against tracing. We would have exercises that, at the time, I thought were ridiculous. Like drawing the same pose over and over or from just a slight angle apart from one another (turn-arounds).
Ultimately, a master artist shouldn't be concerned with the task of drawing (running that pencil across paper, brush on canvas, etc), but with what he/she wants to see on it when it is done.
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I don't mean to be closed-minded about tracing. But I think that if you're going to go through the work, you should really try something like triangulation while doing life drawing. It's so much easier than tracing once you get the hang of it, and you can do so much more with it! I almost want to teach a basic drawing class at my university just so I can explain to people why drawing from photos isn't a good idea. I think most people don't know why it's not okay.
I agree with you that master artists shouldn't be concerned with the task.
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Very thought out comment, thank you for posting it!
I still stand by every one of the benefits I stated in this journal though.
Unfortunately I'm in class and don't have the time to make arguments with such a long-winded comment (since there are too many comments I'd like to reply to right now) but let me just say I see where you're coming from, and it puts a very nice perspective on it, and you can feel free to stand by it. However, and I also see where I'm coming from, and I'm not talking out of my ass, it's actually helping me.
Thanks again!
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No problem.
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Thank you very much for voicing what I've been thinking for ages!
Can I bore you with a little story? Can I? Can I?
At the very beginning of my art class in school, we were supposed to be left alone and draw whatever we wanted. We were pretty novice at drawing, so we constantly flogged our art teacher for help. Getting a bit fed up of our requests, he suggested that we trace the part of the picture we couldn't freehand.
Needless to say that all of the ears shot up. Theoretically speaking, of course.
Eventually, we all began tracing the whole picture because we couldn't be arsed to do it freehand. Well, all except one girl; she continued to freehand because she thought it was wrong.
Six months later, we couldn't break out of our tracing habit, which led to minimal education.
The girl who didn't trace for the monster period of time got the highest grade in the class, only tracing small parts to educate herself.
I believe tracing can be educational, but only for a short period of time/small periods of time over a long period of time. The problem is that people get too addicted to the convenience of it and see it less of an educational tool and more of a means to make art. I know, I fell into the same trap, and didn't focus on the educational side.
Needs moar long ranting.
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You can!
Very very cool story and insightful too. All good things should be used with moderation including this technique I spoke about in the journal. If people start to use it as the only way they'd know how to draw then it'd be just as harmful as any other method that retards their artistic growth. Once used in the right way, you can go far with it!
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I didn't know you meant tracing photos. That's ingenious! I like it.
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So how are you, darlin'?
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good, goin to sleep now
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lol what's really funny is i did this... like 7 days ago with [link]
i didn't change the pose because i didn't think of doing the heads thing.
but that i will save for next time~
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Well it does include tracing, as there are lines and silhouettes ran directly over the photo, it's literally tracing 
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Yeah, but that is only part of what you're doing. I mean, by the end it doesn't look like you traced that picture, only referenced. And that's the thing with me. Sure you can use tracing as a means to practice, but don't try and pass it off as your own work. I mean, what you produce IS your own work. I've never had a problem with what you're doing and don't consider that tracing.
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