![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
40 Days of Art: Tracing
I'm not going to do a Lenten Sketchbook it this year because a)I have all day to draw my own stuff anyway and b)my sketchbook has smaller pages. Anyway, there are only so many polar explorers the internet can take.
I get lots of emails asking about art, how to improve at it, and how to get into animation, so I thought it would be beneficial to establish a public compendium of advice, at least as far as I am capable of giving. Please be advised that I am far from being the definitive expert on this stuff — I only have my personal experience to go on, and tips I've picked up from people along the way, but I cannot guarantee they will work for everyone, or indeed that they are right at all. You are welcome to discuss and debate in the comments! The more input the better.
In order to fill up the whole forty days, which at this point is daunting, I'm going to work forwards from the very beginning, or at least what I can remember from the time when I first started taking drawing seriously. Not only does this start at square one, but it has the benefit of being How to Learn to Draw on a Minimum of Funds — no expensive art supplies or technology required! Just paper, pencils, a library, and a lot of time.
The first thing I did, as a fourteen-year-old under house arrest* in the blazing hot summer, was a lot of tracing.
*not actually; it's called 'suburbia'
Lots of people get down on tracing, and for the most part, I agree: it doesn't expand the imagination, it's just a flat duplication of lines, mindlessly parroting, etc. But I would propose that that isn't the point. Nobody traces because they want to express themselves, they trace because they like the picture. Humans are fundamentally an imitative species, and you learn by imitation, so why not do a bit of tracing, especially if you're at that stage where you need artistic training wheels?
What people don't think about when they're badmouthing tracing is what it does teach you: fine motor control. As long as you're carefully following the lines and not just dashing something off, you're training the nerves and muscles in your hand to follow very specific and subtle instructions from your eye. There's a constant loop of motion-line-appraisal-correction, a circuit that is at the core of all drawing — how can exercising that be a bad thing? And when you're tracing, you don't have the added pressure to have a good idea, make that idea communicate, make the drawing appealing and technically correct, etc; it's just about the line. All those other things can come later!
Having said that, I should clarify what I mean by tracing. I do not mean tracing with tracing paper. Tracing paper is too clear to be of any cognitive use as you can't see the line you're drawing. When I was tracing stuff at home I would use ordinary copy paper. If you have the cheap lightweight stuff it's transparent enough that you can get a decent view of the drawing underneath, but it's opaque enough that you very clearly see the line you are making on top of it. This gives you a sense of the drawing you are making, and you can appraise it as an independent drawing, despite it being a copy. You can make sure your lines hook up with each other, and that they're nice lines to look at, not wobbling all over the place. Most importantly, it forces you to use your brain to interpret things — if you're not exactly sure how some lines interrelate because your view of it through the page is too fuzzy, you can make it up! Try to extrapolate from what you know of the drawing and come up with something that makes sense. You can check back later to see if you got it right, and the cycle of trial-error-correction will teach you a lot, too.
If your paper is not transparent enough to see the finer details of your subject clearly, you can use a lightbox, or 'the poor man's lightbox,' a.k.a. the window. Because the paper you're drawing on is fairly thick, you should still be able to see the lines you are making; the backlighting is just to make the details pop out. This is a way to get out of a corner but please remember: try to do as much of the drawing as possible without it. If you do use a lightbox, once you have transferred the lines, take your drawing back into normal light and go back over them (tracing the trace) to make them look nice.
It is, of course, important to trace from good artwork. The Disney 'Art of...' books are a good place to start as you can pretty much guarantee that anything that made it into the book is high quality. There are lots of talented illustrators out there, too, whose work you can use, especially if it's of the easily-readable linework variety. Comics are tricky as there are some artists who are much better than others, and when your eye is inexperienced it's hard to tell them apart. Chances are, though, if you respond to something, it's got some good qualities, and can be a starting place at least. These days you can screen capture DVDs, print them off, and trace off that if you want — oh, technology! But there are still lots of ways to do it the old-fashioned way.
Tomorrow: Basic facial construction!
I get lots of emails asking about art, how to improve at it, and how to get into animation, so I thought it would be beneficial to establish a public compendium of advice, at least as far as I am capable of giving. Please be advised that I am far from being the definitive expert on this stuff — I only have my personal experience to go on, and tips I've picked up from people along the way, but I cannot guarantee they will work for everyone, or indeed that they are right at all. You are welcome to discuss and debate in the comments! The more input the better.
In order to fill up the whole forty days, which at this point is daunting, I'm going to work forwards from the very beginning, or at least what I can remember from the time when I first started taking drawing seriously. Not only does this start at square one, but it has the benefit of being How to Learn to Draw on a Minimum of Funds — no expensive art supplies or technology required! Just paper, pencils, a library, and a lot of time.
The first thing I did, as a fourteen-year-old under house arrest* in the blazing hot summer, was a lot of tracing.
*not actually; it's called 'suburbia'
Lots of people get down on tracing, and for the most part, I agree: it doesn't expand the imagination, it's just a flat duplication of lines, mindlessly parroting, etc. But I would propose that that isn't the point. Nobody traces because they want to express themselves, they trace because they like the picture. Humans are fundamentally an imitative species, and you learn by imitation, so why not do a bit of tracing, especially if you're at that stage where you need artistic training wheels?
What people don't think about when they're badmouthing tracing is what it does teach you: fine motor control. As long as you're carefully following the lines and not just dashing something off, you're training the nerves and muscles in your hand to follow very specific and subtle instructions from your eye. There's a constant loop of motion-line-appraisal-correction, a circuit that is at the core of all drawing — how can exercising that be a bad thing? And when you're tracing, you don't have the added pressure to have a good idea, make that idea communicate, make the drawing appealing and technically correct, etc; it's just about the line. All those other things can come later!
Having said that, I should clarify what I mean by tracing. I do not mean tracing with tracing paper. Tracing paper is too clear to be of any cognitive use as you can't see the line you're drawing. When I was tracing stuff at home I would use ordinary copy paper. If you have the cheap lightweight stuff it's transparent enough that you can get a decent view of the drawing underneath, but it's opaque enough that you very clearly see the line you are making on top of it. This gives you a sense of the drawing you are making, and you can appraise it as an independent drawing, despite it being a copy. You can make sure your lines hook up with each other, and that they're nice lines to look at, not wobbling all over the place. Most importantly, it forces you to use your brain to interpret things — if you're not exactly sure how some lines interrelate because your view of it through the page is too fuzzy, you can make it up! Try to extrapolate from what you know of the drawing and come up with something that makes sense. You can check back later to see if you got it right, and the cycle of trial-error-correction will teach you a lot, too.
If your paper is not transparent enough to see the finer details of your subject clearly, you can use a lightbox, or 'the poor man's lightbox,' a.k.a. the window. Because the paper you're drawing on is fairly thick, you should still be able to see the lines you are making; the backlighting is just to make the details pop out. This is a way to get out of a corner but please remember: try to do as much of the drawing as possible without it. If you do use a lightbox, once you have transferred the lines, take your drawing back into normal light and go back over them (tracing the trace) to make them look nice.
It is, of course, important to trace from good artwork. The Disney 'Art of...' books are a good place to start as you can pretty much guarantee that anything that made it into the book is high quality. There are lots of talented illustrators out there, too, whose work you can use, especially if it's of the easily-readable linework variety. Comics are tricky as there are some artists who are much better than others, and when your eye is inexperienced it's hard to tell them apart. Chances are, though, if you respond to something, it's got some good qualities, and can be a starting place at least. These days you can screen capture DVDs, print them off, and trace off that if you want — oh, technology! But there are still lots of ways to do it the old-fashioned way.
Tomorrow: Basic facial construction!