Your Opinion on -Tracing-

[gempompadour]

Oh god, is this the same guy that used porn to draw women in fighting poses? Lmao, those examples are hilarious tho

[byelacey]

Tracing, when used ethically, is a tool.

Photos I took, sketchup models I made, 3d CSP dolls I've posed, I trace them all. Having a 3d room put together not only helps me imagine characters in a space and keep things consistent, but it also saves time. Same with posing a 3d doll rather than drawing a skeleton.

Not everything is about personal growth, sometimes you need to get things done, and assets you own or have licensing rights to are just another tool at your disposal.

[azzy-m]

Tracing is actually a pretty good way to learn how to draw something, or when you're referencing something. Kind of what the point of bases are (do people still use those? I remember them being a thing when I was on dA). Comics do this all the time with backgrounds and some poses that are difficult to draw.

The thing I do for poses I find difficult to draw is that I make a quick 3D pose on Magic Poser (an app you can have on your phone), import it on to my computer, and try to trace basic shapes over them so I can draw - if what I said makes sense-

A problem arises is when someone outright traces the drawing itself and calls it "their art" - that's just lazy. If it's another artist's work, like they trace it over, maybe change the colors a bit, and say it's their art, then that's just art theft. I usually see kids who are unaware of what art theft is do this, so it's best to inform them that thats not okay, but sometimes you get adults who are more often not PROFESSIONALS IN THE INDUSTRY (like Butch Hartman, dear god), doing this, and I'm like... why?

[MrOwl]

Oh god, is this the same guy that used porn to draw women in fighting poses? Lmao, those examples are hilarious tho

YES!!! He's a joke among superhero comicbook fans (There's Rob Liefeld too) the weird thing is, he's actually a good artist, his earliest comics (from the late 90s) aren't traced, and they're pretty good.

[HGohwell]

At best you're not learning anything out of the act, since all you're doing is a game of "connect the dots".

That's a legitimate drawing exercise.

Ok so sorry to just pick out this point in particular, but in the nicest possible way, this attitude annoys me. You have several people here saying they started learning by tracing and that it helped them. In my my opinion, if lots of people are saying they learnt something through doing something, maybe, just maybe, there's something to it and sneering down at it makes people feeling like something the genuinely helps them is bad?

Not to mention how common it is to teach people to write by tracing and then doing it on their own once they understand the basic shapes, so there is obviously something to it. How is saying an a is a circle with a tail and different to saying a head is a circle with a triangle, so trace the shapes, you know?

[MrOwl]

You have several people here saying they started learning by tracing and that it helped them.

HGohwell's almost always right, here's some resources for you lurking the thread.

Learn To Draw By Tracing

How to improve your drawings by tracing - Noukah

[Darth_Biomech]

Ok so sorry to just pick out this point in particular, but in the nicest possible way, this attitude annoys me. You have several people here saying they started learning by tracing and that it helped them.

I mean, yeah, you cannot not learn while doing something, that's a given.

How is saying an a is a circle with a tail and different to saying a head is a circle with a triangle, so trace the shapes, you know?

But that's not tracing. When you trace you do not examine the shapes and such, you are photocopying another image, just manually. I "drew" like that when I was 12. It did not helped me become better at drawing. I learned nothing. I just thoughtlessly piggybacked on somebody else's work or on photos of real objects.
While I do not object that you can probably learn something from tracing, how much greater the speed and the amount of the knowledge would be if instead of simply tracing something you'd instead tried to analyze and repeat it?

HGohwell's almost always right, here's some resources for you lurking the thread.

Like, see here? Two out of three resources here named "learn by tracing", but in them, people don't trace. The lines they're drew over a picture is not the final result, it's for the purpose of analyzing the object. What they do next? Trying to recreate the original without having the original on the screen to draw over.