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OneFreeInternet — So you think tracing can't help you learn?
Published: 2009-09-26 14:45:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 19323; Favourites: 66; Downloads: 0
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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
I guess you're right. OwO I just never thought about it like that. X3 It could definitely help me improve,I know that. X3
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I wish I could fave journals.
I think that this could be expanded on, as well, if you ever feel like it... There is so much more to tracing than people even realize, and it only has a bad rep due to it being abused.
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What would you like expanding on exactly?
and thank you so much.
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I think it would be great to inform the people how much it can help with setting down lighting patters, and, for those of us that have difficulty with their linework (such as myself,) show some things on how tracing can help improve one's linework, and find techniques as well.
And no problem. So few people know the advantages of tracing, and they really need to be informed.
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I used to trace too...I would trace just like you, but instead of putting key things, like proportion lines and whatnot, I would simply look at it and try to recreate how I think I can come about getting the same result. Which was ten times harder compared to your idea xD
Thanks for the insight~
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Took the words straight out of my head....and then lengthened it a lot
I am, honestly, pretty good at coloring. I have no issues with it at all, and I have been complemented solely on it. Anatomy and sketching? Whole 'nother thing. One thing that is slowly helping me, is to trace over skimpy/nude pictures (I prefer skimpy, since it is awkward when someone sees you focusing intensely on a naked person). Not recommended for people who are iffy about nudity, and I'm not sure about laws (Does the 'No porn before 18' law go with nude art? I doubt it....), but it definitely helps. You get to see how muscles are arranged, how skin connects or hangs, how assorted amounts of fat change the body, all without the hindrance of layers of clothing
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I just need to get legs and arms, and I'll be set. They are usually easy for people, but I can already do a torso, head, neck, waist, feet, hands, etc. I just can't seem to get how arms and legs look
But yeah, nude is awesome.....IN MULTIPLE WAYS *kinky grin*
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Wow, I'll be honest, I never thought of tracing as a learning tool at all. I just thought of it as theft because people have made it that way and stole plenty of works that way. After reading this I my self am thinking about giving it a go. This was also quite a helpful tutorial
Awesome journal!
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Though the sad truth is, many people just rip without trying to learn at all.
BUT YOU'RE AWESOME FOR WRITING THIS JOURNAL ANYWAYS AND I LOVE YOU
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I LOVE YOU TOO FLOATING CAT
Seriously, I'm tired of the anti-tracing crusades :/ I think it mostly comes from not understanding the true potential of using it to learn.
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very very insightful! This is one of your polls I'm grateful for.. I certainly am lookin at 'tracing' in a different light now. Arigato, ctjemm! 
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I never thought Tracing could help Like that. Thank ye, good madame for showing me the way.
AND WHAT THE GOD. YOU CAN DRAW DOMMOT.LOOK AT WHAT YOU JUST DREW.
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I can't draw properly for shit (at least not yet). 
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The slutty animu chick says otherwise.
But srs, if thats not a proper drawing, then I have a long way to go.I guess i'll just Chip away at it.
Also,
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