is tracing wrong???

[soup]

hi people im still new to the digital art thing, im taking a digital design course in september, and im brushing up on my art/painting/drawing skills with my new wacom, as im still trying to familiarize myself with painter 7, and the tablet itself, im starting to wonder if tracing is a bad idea to learn my way around, not only to familiarize myself but also to improve my compostition skills, does anyone have any advice?? should i stop playing with my tablet and take a traditional art coures?? (im still learing the basics when it comes to paining) or should i be using painters tracing paper to make a million variations of the mona lisa????
I guess this is kind of a personal option, but any advice would be very much apreciated

[krayz]

Sure tracing can help... but not much... when you trace, everything is there for you. I mean you can see clearly where the lines are... almost impossible to make mistakes. You won't learn that much from tracing.. not as much as if you actually copied the picture. By this I mean, get the picture you want to 'learn' from. Scale it so it takes up half of the canvas (leaving the other half free for your copy).. and copy - NOT trace.

The best (and probably only) time to trace is if you were having problems with drawing action poses for example. Grab some action pose pictures. Put the picture/s onto their own layer. Create a new layer above the picture layer, which will now be your tracing layer. Then use the picture underneath as a guideline to break everything down into the basic shapes (cylinders, cubes, spheres) by drawing over them. Then use the copy process above to fill in the details.

As for other things like composition.. this takes time and perseverance (and also from studying other people's work). Mostly trial and error.

If you really want to learn then I suggest getting some books.

Anyways, hope I helped some. Sorry if I've missed anything, or not been as clear as I could've been, or I misunderstood you. I've missed a nights sleep so am understandably F*CKED.

Good luck.

[soup]

thanks dude, Im starting drawing class soon so hopefully tracing will be a thing of the past