Tracing to learn - fast
 

Beginners SHOULD trace in order to learn. Life is short - so why suffer when you are learning to draw? Art is supposed to be fun.

OK...so shoot me....I hate to see people suffer and fail. My advice for all beginners who think they might have a little talent and want to "jump into" art and learn to draw in as short a time as possible is to TRACE.

It is a little like "training wheels." Beginners should trace the drawings (and sometimes the paintings) of the Old Masters. After all, you might as well learn from the best. I can't think of a better way to learn how to draw (fast, easy and accurate).

Drawing is basically just training the hand to accurately respond to what the eye can see. The more you do it, the better you get. If you trace the old masters, you will get a feel for their greatness.

Tracing gives you positive results. Making all your old mistakes over and over again teaches you nothing, is frustrating and makes for giving up too soon.

For example, a person who is learning to play the piano isn't asked to invent music in order to learn...they are given exercises and asked to follow the music written by those masters who have gone before. Oftentimes, playing this music is simply enough to give them pleasure and is all the farther they will go with it. But sometimes, a student has a little "extra special something" and goes on to compose his or her own beautiful music.

Learning to draw is both time consuming and expensive (i.e., model fees, classes, etc.) and if you didn't go to art school as a youth, you probably missed the opportunity of spending a few years learning to draw the hard way. I contend that tracing is an inexpensive and fast teacher...my students learn to draw much faster this way than I did the hard way.

I am NOT suggesting that if one traces, they fib and claim the resulting work as original. I do NOT suggest that tracing a photograph (most especially a bad one) is a good way to learn much of anything.

At some point, tracing becomes a bore and when the sudent has had enough of it, drawing on their own becomes much faster, easier and a joy. This is the time to start drawing that which is in front of you.

I encourage every beginner (and those who may be classified as "mediocre" and want to improve) to consider this unorthodox method. Whoever reads this and wants to learn to draw, I say TRACE....but be careful who you tell. The purists are harsh judges. They will say that you cheated, and they will be very angry that you didn't "suffer enough" and do it the hard way. (Some of those "purists" still can't draw very well - even when they have suffered mightily for years and paid their dues by doing it "the right way"). Sometimes I wonder if they just don't want others to get ahead of them...

Also...painting is simply drawing with a brush....it gets really easy when you know how to draw. Good luck guys...the world needs more good artists.

When I read your music-analogy, I smiled. During the time I was copying other artist's work (not Old Masters, mind you), I would sometimes trot out this same analogy. Ultimately, I became resentful of occasions that called for me to "explain myself" and simply stopped (explaining myself).

Allow me a moment of contradiction. In a previous, similarly themed post I said I advocated "no short-cuts", and here is Karin, advocating short-cuts. Hmmm. In my view, those who profit from such short-cuts likely need them. As Karin said, if you didn't have the exposure during your school-days, when your top worry was the number of zits brewing, not making the mortage, you may not have the luxury of the "long and winding road". Are you going to miss out driving the express-way? Sure you are. Will you end up at the same destination? Not necessarily, not even likely, but if you enjoy where you are, that may be enough.

The lure of the easy path is seductive, and I fear too many will be lulled enough that they'll lose the impetus to strive beyond the limits such paths place of your development. I don't know if I'd actually "teach" tracing, but I can see the validity of it's use in an ongoing evolution, providing you DO evolve.

Tracers Annonymous
 

My name is Lon Haverly and I am a tracer. It started when I was a child. As I got older I became ashamed of tracing. I would only do it when I was alone and no one was watching. I worried about what people would think. Now, thanks to Karin, I can come out!!! I AM NOT A CROOK!!! I trace, I erase, and I'm in your face!

I trace, or use transfer methods. But the end result is my style which makes it unique.

When we learned the alphabet, we traced each letter, then drew it without tracing. Eventually, after learning cursive, and years of practice, we developed a signature all our own. So it is with drawing. You copy the shapes, or trace them. Then you develop line techniques. After much practice, you develope a style all your own.

Tracing is fine for the layout, or for painting. But for drawing, it is the quality of lines and the line technique that makes the drawing. You can have perfect shape and form, but if your lines are skimpy and your technique is weak, your drawing will be weak, no matter how "accurate" it is. I would rather see beautiful lines drawn in an expressive style than a perfect drawing with no line quality. The line is the thing. Form is good, but the art of it comes when your line is beautiful. Each line. That is why it behooves the serious art student to study the line qualities of the masters, copy them and discover why they are good. If each line is good, your drawing will be good.

Here are the kind of drawings I am talking about. Even doing a convincing tracing/copy isn'that easy. But if you try, you could learn things like:

Anatomy

Composition

Lessons in drawing drapery

Sensitivity of line

The principles of the general division of light and shadow with the importance of the unity of patterns in each.

Something about the principles of warm and cool colors.

You can also see the beauty of working on a toned surface...and not just using an ordinary pencil on white paper...

And here's how to do it...find a picture in a book that you like. Choose to learn from the best. Go get a colored Xerox blow up so you can see it and copy/trace/grid it...or whatever. You can be your own critic...if your rendering doesn't look like the original...try again until you "get it right."

Note: If you try this and it just doesn't work for you...stop immediately and take somebody else's advice.

You didn't think I'd miss this thread, did you? ;)

That's it EXACTLY. To trace to learn, and only that, is one thing. It may have great validity. But I have met more than a few artists who have been "lulled" into thinking that the attractive results they achieved are theirs, and they never go beyond that. They don't evolve. And when they are confronted with this (not by me, or other artists, mind you, but confronted by their own limitations) they become angry and defensive, and more fixed in their resolve that they don't need to evolve.

I am one of those "purists" who learned how to draw young. Drawing isn't that painful. I don't really understand all this emphasis on "struggle" and "suffering". I'm not saying that there isn't an element of frustration to learning any new skill, but drawing and painting is a joy. I don't want to spend less time with it, I want to spend more time with it. I don't want to take "short cuts", I want to draw. The more I draw, the faster I get, and the more accurate I get. I don't see how tracing would have helped me in this process.

I noticed that I usually finish my projects in art class faster than the students who traced. I don't think that was because I was more "talented", I just practiced more. Their tracing didn't give them any edge in speed. That's because they didn't practice drawing - they didn't have a sketchbook with them wherever they went. They didn't LOVE it enough. It was a chore, and they wanted to get out of it.

I learned by freehand drawing faces that I tend to make the noses too short, the mouths too wide, and the jaws too broad. I learned to correct this tendency. I think I had a better chance of learning to correct the tendency by drawing instead of tracing. But I guess that's not the area that tracing is supposedly helpful in. I'm not sure.

I attended many an art class with "older" people who were sort of "newbies". Under the right instruction, they progressed well without tracing. It is all about practice, practice, practice. I don't see how any of us can get out of that.

(I know this is long-winded. And I want to emphasize, I am not really contradicting the usefulness of tracing for certain people. But I personally am not a fan!)

Perhaps, Jacqueline, a gift you could present to yourself is permission now to let those other folks proceed along the paths they've chosen, while you continue to enjoy and enhance your experience with the pleasures that your training and talent have provided. You have substantial energy directed toward what others are doing, thinking and saying, energy that could be redirected now to such productive use in your own work.

I did a still-life painting last year that included a background in which was depicted, quite loosely, a famous Chinese brush painting, very simple (a plum branch, a bird), very beautiful and perfectly suited to my composition. When I showed the original of my work to my Mandarin language tutor in the U.S., I felt obliged to explain that I had sort of tried to represent but not really copy the painting . . . and she was quite confused by my "admission", because in the Chinese art tradition, the hallowed regimen IS copying the masters, and until you can accurately replicate the ancient drawings and paintings, you haven't done the training. I also learned from the same woman a good deal of Chinese calligraphy, doubtless some of the most beautiful artwork one can do (entire exhibitions exist that are composed of scrolls of calligraphy). Every stationery store in the Orient is rife with the standard calligraphy workbooks for schoolchildren, dotted outlines of the characters that are filled in, white silhouettes of characters on dark backgrounds that you "trace" with your inked brush (ink ground every session from soot sticks and water), and so on, until you're ready to execute the strokes freehand. With somewhat cultural irony, it would be considered arrogant in this tradition to represent oneself as an artist until mastery of what had been accomplished before you had been demonstrated. In the West, we tend to admire and revere the Radical, the Upstart, and yes, the Drip Painter (of whom one, in another forum and not entirely with agreement, I've expressed some admiration.)

There is tracing that is skipping work, and there is tracing that is doing work. I was never trained to trace, but I was certainly trained to copy masterworks, in the course of which, even in a "simple" line drawing, I had to consider the length, angle, quality, width, and, yes, even velocity, of line, and try to duplicate it. The number of erasures required in the first starts always exceeded the paper's tolerance for ignorance. Eventually I got smarter, just barely, than paper. But that's no small pleasure.

We're all on our own, here, eventually. Many of us reach a point of complete hopelessness, and then we start working to reclaim hope. Sometimes, the effort leads to very satisfying artistic expression. Even the Prince of Wales is an avid watercolourist, completely enamored of it. Isn't it lovely that even Windsor can't resist the call?

As public TV veteran Alwyn Crawshaw ends his painting videos, "It's easier than you think. Why not give it a go?

Steven

Me thinks she doth protest too much.

Is this your polite and poetic way of telling me that you think I worry too much about what other people are doing? Perhaps, but you will note that I didn't question the efficacy of tracing (as described in the original post) as long as it is a path to growth. I am just advocating the position that drawing isn't a "chore".
What exactly does this mean, pray tell? Do you think that I am a "closet tracer"? What? ;)

How about keeping a sketchbook?

Practice is key to drawing. Drawing ANYTHING. A sketchbook small enough to keep with you to pull out anytime there's a free 30 seconds to do a gesture drawing or contour would provide invaluable experience. The beauty is, no one needs to see them and judge.

The bonus is, tracing becomes a tool, and drawing becomes second nature.

My two cents.. :)

Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results. (Tao te Ching) *
 

I began to seriously draw with the Old Masters in 1994. I never painted a portrait or worked in oils before 1995. But by 1997, I had won first prize at an ASOPA competition for (my first) original oil portrait. So many people ask me "how I learned to draw and paint" so quickly....I tell 'em, but they don't really hear me. So I keep repeating it...

If you SERIOUSLY wish to become a pro, I urge you to set yourself a course of study....COPY and if necessary TRACE(exactly) the Old Masters in all literalness, leaving nothing out and putting nothing in.

Primarily, drawing (and painting) is a CRAFT that must be mastered. Drawing (and painting) is all about light and its manipulation. Copying and tracing the "big boys" will help you build a vast store of well-organized and useful information at a much deeper level than "reading" or "talking" about it.

"Making things up" is a natural step that comes only AFTER you have mastered the tools of expression.

Do not expect that making a "serious copy" of an old masterwork (even when traced) to be a breeze. It could take many weeks (or months) of hard work to do one and thus learn what that particular work has to teach you.

I know that it is difficult to muster the self-discipline to study in isolation. The results always come more slowly than you wish...but they do come in direct proportion to the time and effort you are willing to put in.

Life classes may not be available in your area. It would be wonderful to be able to find a living teacher, but don't hold your breath...there is a shortage.

So many of us need a "quick and dirty" way to learn (most especially if we are older and feel that we don't have that much productive time left).

In the beginning, I TRACED the Old Master drawings until I learned what they could teach me.

Now I TRACE (or GRID) MY OWN drawings onto canvas before I begin to paint...and yes, I do work from photographs for my reference.

Now I choose to earn my living by being a full time pro and considering my backlog of work, studio shortcuts make a lot of sense to me - for both financial and mental health considerations.

I love my work...but I don't love to make extra work for myself. I enjoy time outside my studio too. Suffering isn't for everyone and personally, I decided to give it up years ago.

I do not object if someone wishes to do things the hard way as that is clearly a personal choice...but I do not think that "the easy way" should be judged any less noble.

* Steven Sweeny, thanks for the quote.

I have to agree with Karin on this one.

I spent 12 years in art schools, from a wonderful high school art teacher, private lessons, Georgia Tech, and LSU. I have multiple art degrees and I absolutely love to draw. I always have. Since I was two years old I would draw everything and everyone. And just to toot my own horn so to speak, I am very good at it.

I would study my father's vet books on animal muscle and bone structure and do countless drawings of our horses and dogs and foxes and any other animals my father had at the time.
But right now it is easier and faster for me to trace my drawings under my paintings than to draw them, especially my large ones.

I also run transparency acetate through my ink jet printer and lay it over my paintings to double check facial features and hand details.

Art for art's sake is a wonderful thing, but portraiture is a business for me and with two small children I need all of the extra time I can get. To me drawing isn't a chore. It is a luxury. And since I am currently driving a Dodge minivan and not a Lexus, I can't afford it right now.

Wonderful post Rebecca. I'm a busy parent, and have two part-time jobs. You've nicely summed up my feelings on this subject. I hereby give myself permission to trace or project or whatever.Thank you!

Stanka, thanks for reminding me what a great habit it is to carry around a sketch book. It's nice to know that a pro still benefits from it. I'm getting mine out again.

Karin, Thank you for the encouragement and instruction on copying the masters. My fingers are practically itching to do so!!!

Steven, Have you considered writing an art textbook?! You are more than qualified, as you must be aware. Thanks for the (original) reference material on sight drawing.

Lon, LOL's on your tracers anonymous post! Made me laugh.

-Margaret

Thanks, but no way. I have an intense but short attention span and I'd probably . . .

Oh . . . right. I'd probably get to about Chapter 3 and start obsessing about those cello lessons I've always wanted to take.

OK, allow me my 2 cents. Just a question...

Tracing is interesting thought: as a teacher how would one teach his or her students to trace the live model and, uh, wouldn't that tickle the model a bit? Hehe - OK, couldn't resist.

Mark

Why do we think anyone can learn to draw?

Sure, most can improve beyond their current ability, but that does not mean that they will ever be great. After all, I can learn to play golf and with practice I can play better, but I will never be Tiger Woods. Many might say that it is because I did not start as young as he did. But the truth is, if I tried to hit a golf ball at the age he started, I would not even hit the ball - never mind hit it well.

Most of us accept that some people were born with the ability to be great at an athletic pursuit and others are not, and some are so non-athletic that no matter how much they practice they will always stink. I feel that the same is true for art. Most can improve, yes, so I would not discourage anyone from drawing and painting for enjoyment if that is what they want. Who knows, they may get quite good.

But I also feel that some people were born with an ability, a God-given talent if you will, that puts their ability way beyond others. And the more they work at it the better they get. But it is much easier for them - it is natural.

We all started as children drawing for fun and along the way those who had that God-given talent for art began to draw things as they saw them and not as symbols that represented the world. This talent shows at an early age: if you have it, you know it - you were the one who stopped drawing trees that looked like lollipops before anyone told you that is not what trees looked like. And if you have this talent you do not need to trace, you may choose to trace to copy a drawing to canvas or to speed things up a bit when under a deadline or as a learning tool. But I would hope that drawing freehand brings you much more enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. Also, IMO, accuracy is not all there is to good drawing.

Now I will admit that there are some who have this talent and did not develop it, and so they are not as good as they should be. And there are others who were not as gifted, that with hard work, have gotten quite good. And the amount of this talent we have varies from one to another. But there is no denying that there are some that are just blessed. At the same time, there are some who, no matter how much they practice, will never have it.

So, yes, just as we can teach music we can teach art, but we must always remember just as there are very few Mozarts, there are also very few Bouguereaus.

So I will say IMO there is no shortcut to learning to draw well. Tracing can help you get to the end but without the ability to see, even tracing won't help you. In the end, only those with a true ability to draw ever will be any good at it. The rest of us must struggle with our weakness and learn to make up for what we lack in talent with hard work.

And the part I hate to say, but really feel is true, is some people should just put down the paintbrush and back away from the easel before someone gets hurt. :)

Michelangelo traced the forms on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Just a thought...

Peter

Transferring is a bit different from tracing to learn, IMHO.

If I draw free form for instance, I can then transfer the form to canvas or to a ceiling.

The idea of searching for an easier method of learning is a good one. I believe we all are doing that to some degree: trying to master a method and learn what is wrong with it so we might make it better.

Tracing a form might familiarize you with the form, but I believe that's all it would do. The familiarity will assist you when you step away from tracing and endeavor to draw what you see freehand.

Then being familiar at that point would help. But no matter what, you will have to learn like everyone else, with a lot of hard work and practice.

As I mentioned in my other post with a little humor: trace a live model, or a live landscape... in order to accomplish these tasks they are back to square one, even if they are familiar with anatomy. To draw from life requires more than anatomical knowledge.

Ever see some doctors draw? My uncle is a bone specialist, surgeon. I have seen him draw out the skeleton. You know it's accurate as far as a skeleton goes, but its not pretty. (LOL)

The fundamentals of drawing or learning to draw simply must be put into practice if one is ever going to learn to draw.

My 2 cents - take it for what it's worth and I hope it is a help.

Mark

In the sense in which tracing is suggested here as an exercise, the point isn't familiarity with the subject, but with the choreography of line. What you're doing in these exercises is training your mind and hand to absorb and replicate the process of creating descriptive, accurate line that, paradoxically, disappears in its representation of form.

Ted Seth Jacobs' introductory remarks to his "Drawing With An Open Mind" are instructive as to what we're on about when we try to represent subjects and shapes within them with contour outlines. I very highly recommend the book, not just for the drawing instruction but for the profundity of the philosophy that Jacobs imparts along with it.

In sports, for example, there are many "Inner" regimens -- "Inner Tennis", "Inner Golf" -- in which the practitioners are encouraged to cultivate a mental image of what they're intending to do. Tracing, in the sense urged here, isn't about a scribe's copying of texts. It's about training mind and muscle memory to learn and remember what an accurate, uninterrupted, intentional line of definition and description -- whether contour or shading, hatchmarks or blending -- feels like, so that when you're not tracing, when you're working from life (or even resketching from another source), you can do the same with confidence and accuracy. Having worked through the scales, you can sight-read the sonata. It makes all those piano -- and drawing -- lessons worthwhile.

Hello, Steven.

Respectfully, I disagree. Also what we have here is a play of words. Familiarity, what is meant in other words would be so even if one is knowledgeable of the thing - be it anatomy or otherwise.

Knowledge itself of a form (anatomy for example) does not make one an artist. Understanding the choreography of line it is exactly what I am talking about. This form of practice teaches you to be familiar or to become, to a certain degree, knowledgeable of anatomy, in a limited way.

Yes, one might recall from repeated tracing attempts the curve of a line, the placement of landmarks even, shape of a feature and so on. This will help, and I agree it will help. But it will not teach the fundamentals of drawing. Tracing will not teach this, but drawing will or painting will.

You mentioned the piano; I have been playing the piano for 30 years and have taught as well. I have had those that have strong ability or training even in the reading of music, who, however, couldn't play at all. They would say they always wanted to, and even tried, but wish they had someone to teach them. Did they learn faster? Yes, in some cases they did; because they were familiar, I could go right to teaching them the fundamentals without having to teach them to read the notes in front of them. However, amazingly, they had to start just like all the rest, and learn where those notes were on the piano, and the scales, and so on. They had to go home and practice the same things the others did and were graded in the same and so on.

Also, for many years I was a Karate instructor, and have trained children, adults and even law enforcement. I used to love it when many of the teens I taught would come in thinking they already knew so much. I mean, they saw someone, or watched TV, or read a book, or saw a training video, or even had various Martial Arts magazines with step by steps in it. From this they felt they had learned so much. TRUE, they were familiar but when it came down to execution they had no concept. Point being, they had to be taught just as anyone else did and in most cases even unlearn improper techniques.

From my experience, I don't see it as a benefit, but as I said before it is my opinion - take it for what it's worth. :)

Mark

The Benefits of Tracing
 

I'm not usually one to get involved in debates but I couldn't resist this one! :sunnysmil

My mom used to put papers, pens, pencils, markers, etc. in front of my older brothers and me when we were all very young, and have us draw while she caught up on her own artwork. At first, I would draw huge heads on top of tiny bodies, and all sorts of inaccurate subjects. Luckily she had many books about drawing, 'How to Draw the Head and Hands' and other books of that nature and I began to trace the drawings from the books. My brothers tormented me for it! They even tattled on me, telling my mom I was never going to learn if I just traced. I traced and retraced heads, hands, cartoons, trees, animals, National Geographic pictures until I got them right.

By no means am I perfect at drawing today, and I am certain I never will be, but I sure did excel at it very quickly. I learned a great deal from tracing! The proportions of the face, shading, line quality, etc. By the time I was in 2nd or 3rd grade I stopped tracing and just started drawing what I could see, which was a whole new world after all that tracing and training of the eyes. My abilities had increased so much and so fast that I began creating designs for a silkscreen company at age 11. Which of course quieted the teasing of my brothers and made me very happy! :D At 16 I had my first portrait commission for a couple's 50th wedding anniversary (talk about pressure! I cried the entire time!). But I really don't believe I would have been at that point so young if it weren't for the tracing. I still have a long way to go and a whole lot to learn, but I think what I learned from tracing gave me a strong foundation to build on.

Thanks for listening, I'll step off my soap box now.

Mark,

I don't know that there's really any item of disagreement. It's just an exercise. Not everyone will try it, not all who do try it will benefit from it. Something else will work for them.

I first picked up a guitar nearly 40 years ago and to this day I still warm up with a series of silent fretboard exercises that stretch out and limber up the hand, so that when I go to the music and read, say, D sharp, I "remember" from those "tracing" exercises what it feels like to extend the correct finger to the correct string and fret. That's all. It's no big deal. The exercises aren't music, and aren't supposed to be.

For the discipline, I also spent too much time in a dojo, and in retrospect I think all those endless hours of kata were a "tracing" exercise as well. People kept punching and kicking me, though, so I transferred to gentler arts.

You know, Steven, I know why sometimes I don

I am sure tracing is a useful exercise for some. We all learn things in our own way. And no one way should be forced on anyone. In the end if you can draw I suppose the road you took to get there does not matter.

But I still feel that some people are just born with a talent for things and art is no exception. Playing the piano was mentioned and Mark said I will take that one step further how about those with no formal training at all that can hear a song once then sit down and play it. Or have composed their own music but have no formal training? We say they are gifted.

I do not consider myself to be a prodigy or the next Michelangelo by any means. But I truly feel that without at least some gifted talent for art no amount of exercises, training or instruction will make you a great artist.

Just as anyone might learn to play piano, anyone can learn to draw or paint at a basic level. But just as not everyone can become a great composer, not everyone can become a great artist.

I myself often question if I will ever become the artist I hope to be, and maybe I never will. I do know that compared to some, drawing did come easy to me. But compared to those who I consider to be great artists, I still fall short. Is it because of a lack of talent I fall short? Or maybe it is because I did not trace enough :)

Yes, the more we draw and paint the better we get and a lot of greatness comes from hard work. So talent alone is not enough. But I feel that innate talent is key to being able to grasp the skills it takes to even start down that road of hard work towards greatness. And maybe that is the gift - not an ability but some intangible quality that drives one towards perfection to get past that hard work, to when it becomes second nature. I don't know. But I just do not feel that there is a short cut to learning anything.

Now I am not the best artist I know of, but I have been asked how I got as good as I am. And to tell the truth although I have practiced, I have to say I really can't attribute my ability to draw to any thing except, to steal from Nike "I just do it". I see it and I draw it I see it and I paint it. And those better then me do the same. They are just better at it then I. I am not ready to throw in the paint rag yet, because I feel that there is room in the field of art for artists of all levels, but maybe it is time that we face the truth. Artists like Nelson Shanks (you may replace this with any artist you consider great here) were just born with a gift we do not have. We could work the rest of our lives and never be as good. Tracing or no tracing. :)

Gifts from God,

I for one believe in gifts from God, as a Pastor, as my Father before me, I was raised believing God gives us gifts or talents as some might say.

I know He gave me the talents I have, but he also made me responsible for them. Was the gift in itself absolute? I mean when my Mother had me, did I come into this world with paintbrush in hand, so to speak, or pencil and pad?

Pardon the exaggeration but just a point, that I look at what I did then (yuck) compared to what I do now. The gift was certainly there absolutely, but so was the responsibility of what to do with it; would I do nothing, then I would still draw at the level I first did. But because I acted from that moment till now I have trained to learn what I do. If I had not practiced, not sought out knowledge, I would have wasted the very talent I was blessed with.

I think respectively, I have restated enough about tracing. Let me add one thought, though: I am not against it. Tracing may have things to teach you, but it's not the end-all or easy way as has been stated, and the dangers around it in place of fundamental training are enough I fear to direct someone on a wrong path.

Oh, and as far as forcing someone in learning a certain way I wouldn't even attempt it; it was never my intent nor my point at all. No one needs me or anyone else to force them to have to practice the basic fundamentals of drawing..
In the end, all who trace will realize that when they wish to proceed further, they will have to learn like all the rest. :)

Mark

In the past I've made the naive mistake of tracing a drawing with the intention of changing certain aspects of it to suit my aim for the finished product. As soon as I stopped tracing and began my attempt at drawing, I was staring reality in the face. I didn't have a clue at to what to do next. So, I began to learn to draw. (With a bit more humility due to the lesson.)

Every time I think I have read every post here I keep finding a new one.

Well, I have to say that when I want a dead on likeness I grid. I can't say that it is a time saving method compared to drawing freehand, but I am not faced with nasty surprises half way into the process.

One thing that working with a grid has taught me is to see everything in abstract shapes. As the shapes kept falling into place (sort of like a puzzle), it became necessary to learn the value relationship between each shape. This alone has been a god send, because I have always struggled with value relationships.

I love to draw and my sketchbook is full with images of people with noses too long, chins too full and god knows what other errors. But the purpose of the sketchbook is just for quick observations and to get something down in the shortest amount of time. This allows for a certain freedom of hand eye coordinations, which gets better over time. As a matter of fact I just recently discovered an old sketchbook and had to laugh pretty hard at what I was seeing. Just about everyone in it has some malformation and looked more like creatures out of horror movies. But imagine how satisfied I was to actually be able to see the growth from one book to another. So I agree with Karin, using shortcut tools like tracing can help you grow as an artist, as long as you balance it with free hand drawing as well.

I missed this thread first time around, and I answer now with a great deal of trepidation, since the subject seemed to arouse quite a bit of passion. So I quickly add that this is just my opinion. Still, I was surprised that tracing had the approval of so many as a way of learning to draw. It's a way for beginners to get satisfactory results quickly, but getting quick results isn't part of learning anything, building a solid foundation is. And learning to do anything well is a laborious process without shortcuts. We mustn't confuse "quick fixes" with effective pedagogy. Going back to the music analogy, tracing is the equivalent of singing karaoke. The essence of learning to draw is hand-eye coordination, getting the hand to obey the impulses it gets from the brain. The way to do that is constant practice. Copying from the masters, or from photographs, is extremely helpful insofar as it brings the eye and the brain into the process. Tracing doesn't do it, because it bypasses both the eye and the brain. It's a purely mechanical process that doesn't even really develop appreciation for form, since all you do is see lines through an opaque piece of paper. And understanding form is the essence of good drawing.

And by the way, Michelangelo didn't trace on the Sistine ceiling, he transferred to the wet plaster drawings from full-size "cartoons" that were a penultimate step that followed on the heels of many, many drawings made from life models.

Again, just my opinion. I'm not trying to change anyone's way of doing things. Honest.

John C.