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Nov. 18th, 2014 01:52 pmcross-posted to tumblr, where no one will see it because my tumblr is a small and lonely blog
#
I wish I could go back and tell my child!self that for the purposes of drawing, tracing is absolutely okay
especially tracing over the how-to-draw books that I had
because seriously I got so much negativity for it -- from peers (I remember on time drawing an elephant by tracing so that it would actually look like an elephant, and then shifting some things, like exact positioning of a leg or whatever, so that when I inevitably got accused of tracing I could say "hold it up, I bet they don't match exactly) and from my parents (who always were disappointed whenever I came up with a drawing that was traced rather than free-drawn)
because being able to look at a photo and copy what you see is an important skill, but it isn't easy
and tracing allows you to get the feel for how to draw the preoper proportions, so that you don't end up with heads at the wrong proportions ("is that a neandarthal?" -- comment on an anonymous chalkboard doodle I'd done of a person in profile, where the horizontal came out squished) or legs in the wrong places ("why is his leg coming out of his stomach" -- comment on a cat I'd tried to draw by freehand)
tracing allows you to get things that look the way you want them to look
and it's not the most advanced form of art and maybe you shouldn't do it forever, but it helps so much and it's not wrong
it is not a sin
#
I wish I could go back and tell my child!self that for the purposes of drawing, tracing is absolutely okay
especially tracing over the how-to-draw books that I had
because seriously I got so much negativity for it -- from peers (I remember on time drawing an elephant by tracing so that it would actually look like an elephant, and then shifting some things, like exact positioning of a leg or whatever, so that when I inevitably got accused of tracing I could say "hold it up, I bet they don't match exactly) and from my parents (who always were disappointed whenever I came up with a drawing that was traced rather than free-drawn)
because being able to look at a photo and copy what you see is an important skill, but it isn't easy
and tracing allows you to get the feel for how to draw the preoper proportions, so that you don't end up with heads at the wrong proportions ("is that a neandarthal?" -- comment on an anonymous chalkboard doodle I'd done of a person in profile, where the horizontal came out squished) or legs in the wrong places ("why is his leg coming out of his stomach" -- comment on a cat I'd tried to draw by freehand)
tracing allows you to get things that look the way you want them to look
and it's not the most advanced form of art and maybe you shouldn't do it forever, but it helps so much and it's not wrong
it is not a sin
