Tracing

Tracing isn't bad. This kind of goes back to my blog about originals and copies. One of the first things we learn in drawing class is to learn from the masters like Edgar Degas. The "Dancer" was definitely one of the many that I had to "trace" with my eyes and translate it onto paper (see left). We used charcoal in the class I took.

So what is the big deal? A while back I was on this website called Instructables browsing for things to create and I stumbled upon a page that was a little painful for me to read. Here was a person who was sharing his/her ideas and people just crapped all over his/her post. I guess that's to be expected if you're going to be contributing to the world wide web and opening yourself up for criticism. And, maybe I was being over sensitive that day. And maybe today as well. But is it that horrible to trace something with tracing paper if it is for your self? 

We trace with our eyes, do we not, when we do "still lifes?" So how is it any different to use tracing paper? Some of us are better than others, but seriously . . . why beat someone about it? I know, it's because we're taking something that isn't ours and making it our own without going through the entire creative process. Alright, fine...BUT what if it's our own original image that we came up with and we just want to clean it up with the aid of tracing paper? What if it's for our use only and not professional? What if it's for tattoos? Or what if it is to, ahem, learn? How horrible is that--not really all that horrible if you ask me. Now, I'm not asking everyone to become the next Han van Meegeren, which could actually be kinda cool, but I'm just saying we have to start somewhere and we learn from the masters. Until we are comfortable can we then move on to doing our own original work.

To create from pure memory without any previous knowledge or any degree of technique can be ugly. In an exercise in one of my drawing classes (see left) the instructor asked us to draw our keys from memory in something like two minutes. Car keys, house keys...whatever. All of the students reached in their backpacks or bags and the instructor stopped EVERYONE. Literally, we were to draw from our memory. It was pretty funny what we all ended up with. Everyone's drawing of their keys looked good, but not as good as it did when we actually drew the keys when we were to actually look at them, which was the next exercise. We traced with our eyes and the lesson we took away was that we use our eyes when we draw. We connect what we see with our brain and translate it down to our fingers.

In a professional setting, yes it's bad to trace and copy art. But, if it's just for your self and to learn I don't think it's bad at all.