HEY THERE... just to clarify, this discussion is not about IMITATING or STEALING other people's art. It's about a poorly argued position that tracing cannot HELP artists develop skills. Anyone who traces someone else's art, for gain or to call it their own, risks being chastised by their peers. I hope this discussion sheds a new perspective on a rather bizarre subject. Cheers! :)

I couldn't draw eyes until I traced them a few times. I don't let random social media influencers have a hand or even a finger in MY drawing process. You do what's best for you.. period.

Tracing isn't bad as long as you don't claim someone else's work as your own

There are even "artists" who look down upon you if you trace your OWN art. Like wtf. I can't do proper lineart when drawing digital so I have to draw it traditionally first.

Thanks for stating this! I use to also trace other artist drawings from comic books, to learn how they did anatomy and backgrounds. Now I have my own style, and I don't trace others drawings anymore. There should not be a stigma on tracing it should be embraced and used as a teaching aide.

can we have an absolute rule in art? the rule should be there are no absolute rules in art.

YES! I love that you emphasized the somewhat ridiculous nature of this discussion. Well done! Your treatment of the many benefits is also a really refreshing angle that is rarely focused on, so kudos on that. I think you and I might have a mild disagreement over the term "tool" which can also be defined as a "means to an end". But that's hair splitting and beside the point. I totally accept the "technique" definition. It certainly is that too. I really appreciate your professional experience coming to bear on this in such an informative and accurate way. I've avoided talking about this myself due to the fact that I can't keep my eyes from rolling back into my head every time I see mention of the "tracing is cheating" mantra. Sheesh! Save me from know-it-all amateurs with little to no experiencial understanding.

"Artists had to worry about someone eating the bowl of fruit" LOL!

The problem with tracing is when you just copy a picture and claim it as your own. That's plagiarism. Unless you modify it and add your style, you're just copying someone else's art. As a learning technique, tracing is great because it helps you understand perspective or anatomy.

THANK YOU! There's absolutely nothing wrong with tracing as long as you use it to learn and not use it as a means to an end to claim other peoples work as your own.

I am glad someone said this! I distinctly remember when I was little I loved to draw dogs. But I would always just do the nose as a triangle...UNTIL I actually traced a picture of a dog and I actually was forced to make that mushroom shape with my own hand. I drew dogs much better after that. I think tracing is a valuable tool in learning and can be a valuable tool in professional art. I completely agree. However I do understand where other artists are coming from and I also think there are degrees of it. It feels bad when you see a post of another artist that has clearly traced your work EXACTLY and is calling it their own. People are afraid of getting their art stolen. That's a valid concern. And in some ways I can see why people call it cheating. I mean, as a consumer if I bought a painting that someone was calling an 'original piece of art' and later I found out it was Paint By Number, I would certainly feel cheated. Now, would I think that the artist was wrong to do a paint by number painting? NO of course not. It's fun and it's a learning experience, and by all means, show it to everybody. But if they were advertising it as their own idea...I feel like its a different story. Ultimately I think the problem is: When does tracing become copyright infringement. Like, if your boss says "make me a mouse character" and you trace Micky Mouse and color him green....that's not gonna work.... But if you have traced Mickey over the years and learned good cartooning methods from it and create your own character because of what you've learned from tracing....again a COMPLETELY different story.

I’m definitely not some crazy good artist, but tracing has absolutely got me into drawing and has taught me about shading and other things. I’m glad I gave it a try

New "artist" here. I am 33 years old and I've always wanted to learn how to draw. But when I was younger I was obviously terrible at it like most kids. I felt self conscious about it so I just stopped. I've always loved drawing and always wished I was good at it because I had the notion that all great artists are just naturally gifted. I learned otherwise just a few years ago. And that some of my favorite artists wish they were better. So, these past few months I've been trying to teach myself. I struggle anytime I try to actually sketch because I get frustrated that I can't get the shading and proportions right. So, I usually give up because I'm too frustrated to have fun. Well, I just bought a small light pad and it's been a game changer. I'm able to teach myself why certain shadows go in spots and how to use soft lines to more so hint at things like shapes of noses. I'm actually having tons of fun now and felt less bad about tracing after I realized it's helping me gain confidence and knowledge and that my pictures are FAR from done just because I got my lines down. I still have to shade correctly and such before it even looks anything close to decent. Anyways, thought I'd put my perspective in on why I like tracing

I feel as long as you're acknowledging the fact that you traced (to yourself at least) and aren't claiming someone else's work as your own it's fine. As someone who works with watercolours I often transfer/"trace" my work after cleaning up linework in a program so I don't have a messy work surface. I feel the majority of people associate tracing with taking a professional image, tracing it entirely, and telling everyone it was your "original" idea when in fact it was someone else's. Hence the agressive perspective of the purists. If you trace someone else's work at home and are really just doing it for yourself and improvement it really isn't harming anyone and you shouldn't be witch hunted for it.

Since you claimed to be a professional illustrator, hearing this opinion is a breath of fresh air.

wow, I've finished fine arts last year and barely drew anything in the past year. This video really inspires me to make something again. thank you!

This has bothered me since I was a child. Thank you.

Hi! Great video :) You hit the nail on the head for most everything I would defend in regards to tracing. I wanted to mention that also, as new artists I see students draw one image or element of what could *potentially* be a MUCH richer piece; but they are so scared to erase or change up that one element, they just leave it as it is. Tracing can open up the freedom to take that same image and move it around on the paper - feel the options. open up the ideas. just like you did with the jack-o-lantern - you had an image you liked. Then you used and re-used it how you truly wanted to. I encourage kids to work like that; because at the end of the day, if they are proud of the time and effort they put into the work, THAT is the part that matters.

Well said sir! Tracing absolutely has made me a better artist- from my graphite pencil to my dip pen! When I get a commission to paint someones pet, I will often print out their portrait and trace it serveral times before I draw it myself on a larger scale. Sometimes when the animal is really hairy/complicated I will have a special large print 18x24 inch made at my local printer and lightly trace the outline of the animal so I don't miss any of those little details, as you said.

Finally, someone had to say it. Tracing isn't always wrong, this is how beginning artists learn basic anatomy

That thing about tracing as a tool and a technique really gives out a new perspective (with me still learning on perpspective and anatomy in extreme angles) with the parallel on playing guitar by ear. To add on this, stenciling is a kind of tracing, yet in my experience, no one ever bats an eye on that. Besides whoever has the time to paint every t-shirt by hand? It goes without saying that nothing is new under the sun.

its also said by old time artists like my Father . he was a trained artist who worked in every medium going, he always told me tracing was cheating and to never do it. well I did anyways without his knowledge ( good old window trick or big lampshade lol ) and it actually improved my drawing skills 100% because after a while I did not need to trace anymore . i developed a memory of sorts to get the shape and perspective correct without having to trace anymore. many years later my son took an art class ( his work is amazing) and that class encouraged tracing as a tool. after he took that class his work tripled .

I would have given up in the beginning stages of watercoloring if I didn’t start incorporating tracing into the process. Now I can sketch mostly on my own from what I’ve learned through tracing. Tracing has been invaluable to be.

Thanx so much for this video. Your reasoned approach was an encouragement. I often use these cool new ultra thin light pads to transfer my sketches to the final drawing paper. Also, I'll enlarge a photo & just trace the outline to get the proportions just right so I can spend more time on the detail of the drawing. Blessings👍

I started tracing as a kid too and I had the exact same epiphany! It also helped me realize that things weren’t always where I thought they were! (Proportions and stuff). Social media has way too much influence and control on so many subjects and is very damaging to a lazy society that would rather be told what’s what, instead of doing the work to make their own decisions! Or to even consider they could be wrong!

Thank you For making this video I'm 15 and I am learning how to draw and I would trace a whole lot and it made me feel like a bad person because I was tracing this I wanted to get good at a certain style. this really encouraged me to continue to draw and learn the style that I like thank you for the video ❤🎉

Sincere thanks for this! I do trace, a lot, and some people are very sassy about it. I'm moderate quality watercolorist, and terrible drawer. Not a great combo. I'm working on it.. So I've been tracing things often. Mostly I'll print simple images - a few rocks, a fish, etc. And try to draw linework onto the image, repeatedly, to get the muscle memory/simplified image, and determine which lines are "necessary" and which are not. I don't need to do this for everything, but a lot of traces are of pictures I took, because I needed to better grasp how something looked from a given angle. Watching people draw things is super helpful but not everyone will draw exactly what I had in mind. If I couldn't trace or line draw onto pictures of eight million jagged rocks, I may not have ever been able to draw jagged rocks... This has also taught me the value of a reference photo of something similar to a subject, when you cannot get a photo of exactly what you're drawing to reference. And similar basics. Something most people may learn in class but I never went to art school, I just like mucking about with paint. Except now I can muck about, and paint my moderately-well drawn jagged rocks. So, yes, it can help(:

i agree, so let’s put it to the test! for 30 days im going to trace ICS lines, circles and eclipses. Then boxes and cylinders in various angles rotated in perspective. Finally, I will be tracing figures, still lifes, and organic subjects to prove if this is actually beneficial to aspiring artists or not. I will take note of the progress of four things: my line confidence, hand stability, observation and overall freehand drawing ability! Will keep the comment thread updated!

I can’t even remember how many times I have told a student that you have to develop eye hand coordination and every time you use a pencil this is practice and necessary! I also have used many different “tracing” methods to save time, when you have to earn a living you cut ANY corners you can! Time is money and you have to maximize your efforts! Wonderful video and I wanted to thank you for this video.

PEW I came from a live and that youtuber Said tracing was bad I was heart broken because the process I have made till now is thx to tracing I am soo happy that I watched this video I am relieved! I will sub

Isn't it funny how the art community encourages everyone to be themselves and be their best selves *and* wants everyone to improve in their own way, yet they don't encourage tracing because "It's bad"? Great video by the way, i hope people including some artists will learn from this! Coming from a teenage newbie artist myself.

great video! I trace to learn/study character anatomy, design, style and such. and it helped me to figure out my own style too! it's pretty much like redrawing it then knowing how to simplify it in certain poses, perspectives and styles.

Thank you I’ve been suffering from art burnout for 7 years and tracing models and furniture is helping me ease back into art

Personally, I've been tracing as a reference and then trying to replicate it onto my own art without stealing it. It helped me go from mediocre art to full on semi realism in *three. days.* tracing, in my opinion, isn't bad as long as you try to draw your own art after getting anatomy practice instead of just up and stealing it. that's what i'm doing.

I totally agree with your point of view on tracing I am going to use whatever method is necessary to achieve my goal of the final piece! Thank you for making this video it has been needed for a long time!

Thanks so much Mark!!! Perfect video for me at this time. I've actually done a bit of tracing, but not in a while. I took the advice of another artist to trace a leaf. I actually laid it on my copier/printer and made a copy of it and then used that as the basis for my drawing. We've got beautiful oak leaves here in California in the Fall and I really wanted to capture the brown and orange and green colors. I did transfer it to some good colored pencil paper and it turned out wonderful. This was a great conversation about the use of tracing and I will try to use it more now in order to learn more about the object I want to draw. Thanks again! I really enjoy your videos.

It really all depends on what you do AFTER the actual tracing is completed. Any 10-year old child with a pencil, tracing paper and a moderately steady hand can trace.

Thank you for this, my guilt is gone.

I do tracing if I cant fully free draw what I want to express on my video but I add new elements to it. My work is combination of both my own drawing and tracing.

Thank you for this, I am not great at drawing so use tracing to create the line drawing I then add my own shading and colors. The only part of the tracing that is original is the basic line drawing. If I did not trace I would not color and if I did not color my life would be missing something intimate and enjoyable, so pooo to those who say I cheat in my heart I know that I create and that's what matters. So once again thank you so much.... Kevin.

I wish to hear from you if possible. Most of my work are done by starting with tracing outlines. Thank you for this very informative and helpful vlogg! I just came across some traditional artist who insist that tracing is cheating. I felt bad and somewhat felt discouraged and eventually stopped watching his video. Then your video came next in the feed. Gladly I went to check this out! I got motivated and started to trace one of my commissioned artwork as of this writing! Thank you again for being positive and encouraging. More power to your channel and passion in art! God bless you!

Thank you for sharing this. I completely agree with you.

I cannot order stickers because cannot set up good location or delivery so I trace the drawings for my qnimes journal and for the future I want to learn how to draw good but now I want sticker to anime journal

I like how you've clearly articulated points we all have in the back of our minds when we hear this silliness about tracing being 'bad'. The pumpkins turned out wildly cute, by the way.

Thank you Mark! another brilliant video, as always great content and discussion.

Thank you Mark for a brilliant video. I’m a 73 year old female who has never drawn before. 3 or 4 years, or possibly more can’t remember, I started sketching, watercolour, coloured pencils then I bought myself the iPad Pro and pencil and I’m now enjoying digital art as well. I must say I’m no expert, it’s better then sitting all day watching TV🎨👵🏻

Thanks for this great discussion! I’ve only really started drawing and watercolor four years ago, after retiring, and it’s very frustrating to me that I can’t really draw. After seeing a review of the Etchr Mirror, I’ve been using it with my photos of flowers and I finally feel a little success when I get the shapes right. There is just so much to learn when one begins to learn art, that any tool that helps one to keep practicing is valuable. Thanks for reinforcing my thought that I am learning how to draw by first tracing the shape. I always enjoy the topics you discuss.

Oh my goodness Mark... This is so on spot!... Great video! Thank you for sharing 😃👍

I discovered this video because I was told by my niece that my brother-in law will never see me as an artist because I trace. I have so much respect for this man. He was a sign writer and an oil painter all his life. What he doesn’t know about mixing colour and painting isn’t worth knowing. Just feeling the burn because I was sending him all of my pictures for him to critique and he feels that way about me! So sad about it..

Wonderful points! I started out my adventure with a brush doing rosemaling and then other kinds of decorative painting. We traced, over and over and over again, followed complete detailed instructions on what colors to use and just how to do it. We made duplicates of a lot of different teachers' books and I was happy. But a decade of doing this, and, I was bored with all of that copying - I wanted to do my own thing. I always used a sketchbook, some times more than others, referring back to my childhood Jon Gnagy books for how it could look. Busy with my family, I quit drawing and painting for quite a while until I decided I really wanted to learn watercolor and took classes at the community college's adult education classes. It was only then that I realized how much all of that tracing had taught me to draw. My lines had become much more confident and I became comfortable showing others what I had done. Those watercolor classes were perfect for me, in that we did not paint from a photo but were instructed to bring in our own still life every week. I learned to see what I couldn't see in a photo. Taking plein air classes sealed my doom. Painting from life was my love. Fast forward some years where injuries and illness took some of my abilities and skills and I wanted to get a better understanding of perspective. Out came printed sketches from online classes and my little light pad and I was able to get the hang of just how that worked and before long I could skip traced lines and just draw freehand. The next great thing was getting confident with ink only because of Inktober several years ago, but that's another story. Tracing is what got me here.

Loved watching you add the shading and using a dip pen while you spoke.... i love this kind of style. Stippling is especially cool and I really enjoyed seeing how you combined many different kinds of shading (hatching, cross hatching, stippling, etc).

I am a teenage realism artist, and I sucked at proportions. Like, I could draw everything separately to a tea, but after tracing a few times, i got the hang of it. though i do not agree with people tracing actual artwork and claiming it as their own, but using it to practice should be fine. you're no less of an artist for doing this, because in the end, the end results is what matters 🤷🏽‍♀️

Mark I was trying to trace hands because they are so hard to draw for me but due to all my years inking Manga pictures I was going to fast to learn how to train my muscles properly. Now how’s that for a run on sentence? Anyways I think tracing is a valid way to do things to teach ones hands and arms how to create things and I do have a light box so I am guilty but mostly I use it to sketch on lesser quality paper and then move it to higher quality with less eraser marks. Great conversation as always and yeah lots of click bait out there which you’re not at all. Oh nice pumpkins man I love how well you can ink free hand. I can’t I always need guidelines or it just turns into one big mess. Cheers from Denver.

I think tracing is completely ok as long as your not tracing someone else’s art and claiming it as your own. That’s plagiarism, and I think that is wrong, however I have a very strong opinion that tracing is perfectly fine. Then again this is all my own opinion, but thank you for saying this

Actually it was quite the opposite because when I little I did drew some characters from my favorite anime from memory and pictures without tracing although I missed some details until around high school I started to draw my own characters and designs even now still learning though.

I am still against tracing, for me it is boring. I have tried it, but understanding shapes and prospective is more important and it is fun. I don't care what other people do, as long as it works for them. If someone can't see the details maybe they just not ready to see them, it is OK.

If I don’t trace, I’ll never draw and I’ll never paint with watercolors which is what I enjoy doing indeed. Well, I have just started using watercolors after longing to do so for a while because I couldn’t draw, and tracing I didn’t even consider. Hence, watercolor painting wasn’t for me. I started to hear from artists that tracing opens possibilities to experiment with whatever medium is appealing to you. As you say, I’m more interested in taking a drawing class now than I was before I started tracing for I know I can always combine the two and get a good result. I hope to trace my own drawings someday :) thanks for the valuable information

Thank you so much for this video😁 I'm so agree with you. I trace some of my work. It have developed me as an artist so much. 😁

I agree. I encouraged my students to take whatever measures they needed to succeed in their endeavors. Tracing was such a popular activity, and it never resulted in failure or stealing, and always boosted the shaky confidence. Thanks for putting this out there.

Wow. I really really appreciate that you took the time to make this video.

Great video that lays out all the arguments in a logic sequence. Pity you couldn't teach this way of critical thinking to others. Scrolling through the comments I noticed that many KNOWALLS who have never taken the time or effort to create a KZfaq video, still felt compelled to weigh in as if they were adding value by saying the OBVIOUS that goes without saying (but of course, these dummies jump up on their soapbox and mouth off anyway) and that is, "if you trace, don't pass it off as your own work". Doh! SMH It also annoys me that there are cowardly thumbs-down people who seem not to agree, yet, refuse to come forward and put forward a reasoned argument. You all need to grow up.

I'm new to the field of digital art and sometime to practice i use Tracing. After i came across the rumors going on that it's totally a bad thing i was worried i might be doing art the wrong way, thanks to you for this video I'm much relieved now. ❤️

Thank you. It's bothering me for a while about this topic. It's like saying copying your friend's homework doesn't need any skills and learn nothing. Well, how can I copy if I'm illiterate, or cannot decrypt my friend's handwriting and something have to go in my head before I can copy it.

Excellent points sir! tracing is an excellent tool.. and even if you let two person trace something, you will still get DIFFERENT results! because we will all have different perceptions. there are still a lot of techniques to consider aside from tracing itself.. as someone who draws freehand, I can say there are advantages in tracing especially when it comes to the accuracy of shapes and positions of what you’re drawing.. it is a great tool and it can actually help you improve your craft.... Practically speaking, I would recommend for someone to trace a photo of actual people, things and evironment rather than tracing a fix artwork :)

Another great message, Mark! I love to trace an outline of something I want to paint, then transfer it several times and paint each image differently. I always learn a lot by looking at the differences in my own work. And it’s just plain fun! I love that we can choose to listen/not listen to anyone, including naysayers.

Great to hear this and I've always agreed, but some people just want to find fault, right. I mentioned to you in another video about how I'm writing a graphic memoir, but I was wondering what you thought about the neuro tests asking the elderly to draw a cube. In Betty Edwards book, she states people can't draw without being taught and a cube is a beginner drawing lesson right, but neurologists use it to judge a person's cognitive functioning. My mother did okay, but she always hated drawing and it was one of the very few compliments she gave me. It's crazy and I found just 1 very small study about cube drawing.

Very good, Mark. I like especially the point of challenging the gullibility of people. Hey, folks, use your brain!

the thing is, almost all of my drawings are traced from a 3d program, for poses, I outline the pose hand head nose ear foot, and go on to add clothes background eyes shading myself,

The best video about the subject. Honest and straightforward. Thank you.

Once again I am so grateful to you and your videos. I am an illustrator myself and I often get discouraged when I read what other artists write or say about tracing. For example some claim that you MUST be able to construct the pose of a figure from scratch and that it's cheating and not okay to use anything to help you with that. However I disagree, especially when it comes to complicated poses with a lot of perspective and foreshortening - I'd rather use references, than getting everything wrong. Sometimes I use DAZ to create digital renderings of figures first to help me out and if the poses are really tricky, I will trace things like the arms or sometimes the entire body for my preliminary sketches. To me creating a rendering as reference is the same as though I invited a model and told them to sit for hours on end while I paint them. But due to what people claim, I tend to doubt myself and my art, at times it even gets so bad that I tell myself I'm not a "real" artist because I rely on those references like 'crutches'. But you're so right - it's not a 'crime' to use references and to trace, especially what you said about muscle memory is very true. I notice that when I draw portraits for example I don't even need any references anymore because I trained myself to get the proportions right. Long story short, I just wanted to thank you ♥ I'm glad I subscribed to your channel yesterday :) (And I am also grateful you replied to my other comments

For year i didn't trace as i was teased by my sister when i was a kid saying that i could not draw and that i traced , so made sure i didn't do this as i didn't want to be thought of as being a cheat , of cause this is silly and as i grow up i seen other artist use it as a techniek i used it my self but i think that in the early year then i didn't do this it learned me to draw better by eye.

So true! I felt pretty embarrassed when I suggested that a classmate (who was struggling with the grid system) should use a projector to enlarge their pre-painting sketch onto canvas and the painting instructor chimed in to inform me that my method was "cheating".

I look up body types to use as references and draw shapes where the joints end and drawing the outside lining to complete drawing the body. Is this stealing/tracing?

Thank YOU so much for this video. I'm getting back to drawing at age 43 and I do some tracing to help me get into practice of the craft. I stopped drawing regular around my early 20's so this video is a big help to me. I just found your video in my feed and thank goodness 🙌✌🙏

I enjoyed this. I understand and agree with your perspective. As a beginner to sketching, tracing vases, apples, birds bodies helped me improve my curves.trying to force my muscle memory and brain to understand this shape.my worry was/is will I ever improve that shape - curves. I have also started to make grids. Hopefully these two methods will help my muscle memory.

What a logical encouraging video. Thank you for sharing

I’m using poses from my favorite action scenes .... to help with my workflow , I’m writing a Drawing and inking and painting my first comic all on my own .... It helps me put together more complex choreography is that OK ... it’s a lot faster than drawing to 3-D skeleton sketch like I usually do .... and basically helps me to do more pages in one day ?

thank you i feel so much better after this video. i will continue to draw with pride now. thanks Campbell.........

If you trace carefully, paying attention to the structure of your source, to how the lines 'flow' and fit together, you definitely learn. Heck, you learn even if you think the human body fits together like an action figure: you learn you were wrong.

1st time watching this video as well channel was not expecting an actual coffee break lol I'm a subscriber

Hi Mark, thanks for joining in on the discussion. You're right, that tracing is a tool that can be used to improve or get work done faster. My younger self used tracing a lot too to improve - mostly to learn how to draw horses, because they are so much more complicated than humans. I also enjoyed the pumpkin drawing a lot, you're a master of hatching! It's an art form for itself. :)

If I want to try a new style, I like to trace a couple of pieces and then attempt it on my own.

I'm glad you put this video up. I'm not the best at drawing, but have drawn for years. If I want to paint something I don't know how to draw or draw well to make it look like what it is. Some simple drawing I can do, but lines aren't straight or looking like what its supposed to look like.

This. Was. Beautiful. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 I can actually see how it can actually help moreso than hurt, and sometimes I'll trace pictures of people just to improve my guideline approaches for when I go freehand because sometimes my guidelines can be inconsistent and make things look wonky.

I Use tracing for position cause if u can draw u can turn the drawing to your own piece of art cause everyone steals for everyone but it’s up to u turn how u use it sometime if u draw the image free hand u can sometimes draw to big or to small

This is an excellent presentation! You are very insightful. This has been a great help and guilt reliever.

Cool beans. Loved your pumkins! And God bless you too!

If you think about it... When we are young in kindergarten, we learn the alphabet and numbers by tracing, which eventually leads to doing it freehand. For me learning to draw properly, it's the same. I started by tracing eyes a few times and then was able to do realistic eyes by freehand. I use face templates, grids, and I'm learning the anatomy of the human body, etc... Eventually I'll be able to do it after loads of practice. Tracing, grids, etc, are great tools. Obviously if someone is tracing someone else's work and reselling it, that is copyright infringement.

if i trace hands will i get better at drawing them since i would study them whilst tracing? (i wouldnt claim them as mine)

My question to anyone saying "Cheater!" is this: As long as copyright is being followed, why do you care? MYOB :) I use tracing how you do in this video, to transfer my practice sketches to the final paper. I use lightboxes, which we were taught in college art class. I use projector apps, which emulate the old masters' Camera Obscura. None of this is cheating, it's smart. It's YOUR art and you can do whatever you want with it. I think the gatekeepers are simply jealous and want to keep out any perceived competition. I don't worry myself with those people.

I think tracing can be useful, so long as the student doesn't get too attached to this method as a crutch. Or at the very least, they use it in a way that expands the technique as a learning tool. For instance, instead of mindlessly tracing, the artist could use tracing graph paper. Those graph lines can get them thinking about how proportions & composition work. Even better is graph paper that architects use, which can teach a person alot about perspectives & depth of field. I like to trace on top of one copy under my sketch, but also to have another copy as a reference to the side. This helps to build the habit of looking at an image off-hand & developing eye-hand coordination. I also think it's important that after tracing, you attempt to do it free-hand (with the reference image). Tracing should be a stepping stone for further advancement of one's own skills, not the end-all be-all for one's own artwork. Gatekeeping & art policing is a fascade used by egoistic amateurs to compensate for their own artistic inadequacies. Another "tracing" method that I remember seeing is the way Disney animators would use a transparent sheet called a cel, and then transfer those details via "the cleaning process". This process required retracing the same outlines to be used for the different motion frames that'd later get colorized & photographed. As a kid, I was fascinated to see that professionals had no issue using shortcuts & openly copying images. Recreating a cel image for animation has to be exact & tracing definitely expedited that process. They weren't doing it from memory, and neither did major artists of history who used this very old technique. According to the collaborative research of artists, lithographers, and surface scientists, artists dating as far back as 1430 traced their images from optical projections of photographs or of real life. It was often used by the likes of Johannes Vermeer, who relied on a Camera Obscura technique to trace his genre paintings -- including his famous *"Girl with a Pearl Earring"* and *"The Milkmaid."* Raphael's classic *"School of Athens"* was also a tracing! In fact, many Renaissance artists have paintings in which you could see the same lines of drapery or backgrounds being reused across various paintings. There are many clearly observable shortcuts used by these great masters. The 19th-century American painter Thomas Eakins had his own secret technique for achieving the remarkable realism often praised in his work: he traced from photographs. Even more modern artists like Andy Warhol famously championed the use of projectors for tracing. So it's a method that not only should be acceptable, it should be praised. Without it, we'd never have seen the great works of art that we have today.

Aha! Tracing PAPER is a tool; TRACING is a technique! 😊👏👏👏👍 Thanks!

Tracing with intent of learning is good, I couldn't draw muscles for the sake of me until I traced, then I started to draw pretty good looking muscles sketches than before.

Recently I decided I just need to get better as it's something I've always thought about but never got round to - So I trace 🤷‍♂️ I'm 37 and I draw like a 6 year old lol with little time its quick and enjoyable. I'm starting to understand about shading in particular. Still early days yet but hopefully it'll pay off eventually.

Thank you very much. You're awesome 👌

Hearing this opinion really enlightened me. There is pros and cons in tracing however the online art community is just really a scary place and is not veru friendly to beginners who trace in order for them to learn. I used to trace back in the past, but its for practice and now my drawings look like they have better anatomy than ever. Of course, I use images and place them in Photoshop for studying and referencing now.

Check art history, both Van Meer and Canalleto (not sure of the spelling) both used tracing in their art. In modern times David Hockney also uses tracing. Not too sure why people take issue with tracing but are quite happy for another artist to throw a bucket of paint at a canvas and sell it for thousands.

so i have seen this debate everywhere and after watching your video i decided to take a class about the history of art. I asked the professor about tracing. He then pulled out drawing from the Renaissance era and he told me what if i tell you these were all traced? I said what?! he said back then tracing was done in the day and age. The artist would trace a sketch of a person to get idea of important features face ect and then color it in later. I asked if that was technically cheating. He said unless your copying a work word for word there is no cheating. He then told me a lot of artists added their own background or their own way of making it their own. i love your video on this :D

As a professional I have unfortunately had this discussion far more times than necessary, and on the internet has always ended in flame wars with children ( immature wannabes and pretenders and yes purists)and unfortunately I’ve seen it damage people’s reputations and even end KZfaq channels. Thank you for expressing this in words that can now be used to refer people to and hopefully shut down and end this stupid argument. Thanks for posting this!

I don't know how much I can thank you! I am a starting artist (and I am improving my art as I am drawing almost daily), but I was so scared to trace due to the art police/influencers... But now I will practise my anatomy and shaped using tracing. I will buy the iPad air 4, do you think it would be a good idea to practise tracing on procreate while learning digital art?