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Old 10-29-2002, 04:09 AM   #18
Steven Sweeney Steven Sweeney is offline
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Quote:
Tracing a form might familiarize you with the form, but I believe that's all it would do.
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.
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