Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Tracing is really bad for you



I recently had an illustration class where I noticed that several of the students felt that tracing is ok. Well it's not. At least not unless you are going for that certain traced effect. But for a student of art, no. Many of the old masters like Alex Raymond used live models for reference. Now this is not possible for most of us, but with the smart phones that most of us have and with a little help from a friend you are able to do most of the anatomically correct drawings you need. And then there's the wide choice of reference pictures you can locate from various sources. Like the internet. With this current project I've used reference pictures in several ways, sometimes some direct copying (the back covers for instance) or then looking for some hard to draw posture from the net or from my source books or then drawing from live or photo i've taken myself or asked someone to take.
Ok so maybe tracing is not so bad if you're not a student anymore. But why do it when there are ways that are MUCH MORE FUN. And then you might learn something in the process too.

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