About Tracing

**daeyeth** · February 24th, 2010, 04:56 AM

I'm new to the digital medium and I've just realized it's really easy to trace anything. So I was wondering...

When is okay to trace?
When should you trace?
Can you learn from tracing?

Like I was watching a clothed figure drawing tutorial on youtube and he starts out by tracing the gesture of the pose in the photo. Also, in some of the speedpainting celebrity videos, it looks like they're painting on top of a tracing or something. Is there anything wrong with that if you're just doing it for practice? Is it a bad habit that will make you a lesser artist? Its so easy that it seems like there should be something wrong with it. Like ppl using the cloner with clone color.

In real life, if I was doing a portrait, I'd spend at least the first hour getting the outline and proportions right first. In digital, I got the picture right here in front of me so I'm having difficulty coming up with a reason why I shouldn't just trace the picture if I'm just doing this for practice. I mean, isn't the only reason you wouldn't trace, when practicing figure drawing or portraiture from photos, is simply for hand-eye coordination practice?

**Slothboy3000** · February 24th, 2010, 04:59 AM

When you have something else in mind to study then yeah, tracing could be used as a means to an end. Like when you want to study the underlying structure of a human, then get some tracing paper (or new layer) and draw the structure over the top.
Bad habit to use it instead of drawing freehand, though, but you already know that.

**AWSullivan** · February 24th, 2010, 09:31 AM

Tracing is pretty much never okay when you are trying to create art. By the nature of tracing you are copying the work of someone else.

If you were going to practice color work and you want to work with another artists picture then you could trace their work but even then I would say you have more to gain from freehanding the drawing and then coloring it.

If you can't freehand their work then you probably shouldn't be trying to color it anyhow until you have drawing and value mastered in black/white or monochrome.

~Anthony

**Baron Impossible** · February 24th, 2010, 09:53 AM

IMO it's OK to trace when

The source material is your own or you have permission to use it

and

1) You need to replicate something complex or recognisable, such as branded packaging or specific architecture

or

2) You already know your stuff and you have a very, very tight deadline

Aside from that there's very little point in tracing (and no point whatsoever in doing a "paintover" - even the Devil doesn't do these because they are simply too evil)

**term8or** · February 24th, 2010, 09:57 AM

Originally Posted by daeyeth

I'm new to the digital medium and I've just realized it's really easy to trace anything. So I was wondering...

When is okay to trace?
When should you trace?
Can you learn from tracing?

?

My answer to your question is:

1. It is okay to trace when you are not plagiarising someone else’s work.
2. You should trace when you decide to do so.
3. Yes. You can learn things by tracing.

This is art. There is no Olympic sporting rulebook. You don't get marked down if you trace, it is not cheating, and it is indeed hard to see how anything other than copyright infringement could be cheating.

But, tracing doesn’t feature in my view of how I would want to spend any large part of my life. There are times, working on construction, anatomy, etc where you can learn things from tracing. You can also learn a lot about line quality via tracing, and you can use tracing to check your copies of other peoples work.

But, really, drawing from life is a much faster way to progress.

**Elwell** · February 24th, 2010, 10:45 AM

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=71441
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=77743
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=113058

**Anid Maro** · February 24th, 2010, 01:22 PM

There's nothing inherently special or wrong about tracing, it's just another technique.

When most people ask "when is it okay to trace?" they really mean to ask "when is it okay to usurp the work of another?". While matters of copyright law can tend to be labyrinthine, ethics don't have to be.

Are you making a derivative work? If so, mention your source and respect any copyright that may exist regardless if you traced, or painted over, or copied, or photographed it, or whatever. If not, then I suppose its your work then and you can trace or do whatever all you want to your own work. Don't use anybody else's work unless you are transforming it into something honestly original. In short, don't plagiarize the work of others.

That's a really simplified view toward ethics and I know it could be elaborated and debated from here to the end of times, but as a basic guideline it serves its purpose.