Question for the artists on here-

Question for the artists on here-

Have you found that tracing art of other characters has helped you develop your skills with inking and whatnot? I feel like it's helping me somewhat to do it alongside learning the basics with Drawabox.

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Tracing will help you in the short, but it will probably end crippling you, artistically.
Unless you are on drawing for hobbie, or just a scumbag on patreon, NEVER trace, train your hand to do all by itself and train yourself to measurements and other basic stuff.

Pretty much. Tracing's a quick way to at least get some reference materials on hand if you have nothing else to work from. But in the long run, it should really only be used in special situations.

Don't be a Greg Land.

Well, I never intend to use tracing for original drawings, I meant just as a practice tool to train my hand to make large but specific movements and get better at drawing with my shoulder.

Just don't use it as a crutch and supplement your drawings from scratch. You still need to learn how to draw with shapes from scratch.

Yeah, that's my plan

Tracing its not a training tool, it's the meth of drawning, you just get results that aren't there, you do a great drawn, because you just did a copy, ergo, you did nothing.
Do lines by yourself, get results out of yourself.

Whenever I trace I'm usually just doing it as a way of looking at the pose. I'm usually trying to draw through what I'm tracing not just going over the lines.
I think it depends how you trace.
If you're tracing without thinking about what you're doing and using that as the final product then it's bad.

I disagree. Tracing can be a good learning tool and help you notice subtleties of characters. You just have to approach it with intent to learn and looking for nuance. It just doesn't help so much with fundamentals.

I doubt you're learning anything. Google it and you should find quickly arguments why tracing isn't worth it.

I recommend checking out John K's animation blog. He's teaching you how to draw cartoon animals 1:1 with construction without tracing. So basically what you're doing now but actually useful.

I doubt any great artist uses tracing. Just learn the nuances by drawing from reference.

Sometimes when I'm lazy, but I still want to practice somehow, I draw over a picture of a model/figure with 3-D shapes.

not really

I don't doubt any great artists use tracing.
They definitely do.

I always trace.

why learn a skill when no one cares.

Fuck you, buddy.

I got my mom a book on him a few years ago. full of the reference shots/photos he used. he'd actually hire people to pose. pretty interesting stuff.

I care, user.

It's recommended to trace but only for analytical/learning purposes and that you never publish your traced stuff. As a very beginner warmup, to be motivated/inspired by your favorite artists, or to figure out a certain aspect of a drawing, like how the fuck does this line work this way for this particular angle and perspective, tracing a line might help your brain suddenly click and get it.
Eventually the only thing you're gonna want to trace is your own original art for lineart, coloring, etc.

>helped you develop your skills with inking and whatnot
It helped me just as well as just doing my own drawings and practicing techniques.

Tracing only for research and studying art styles which doesn't follow the basic of drawing or doens't have enough model sheets to translate them in more complicated on-model fanart or porn.

sure, creating edits has helped me to understand a lot about coloring and shading, like its day and night what I have been doing painting skin compared to months ago and what I do in my weekly webcomic that shall not be mentioned here

Lazy nezumi helped me become leagues better at line art. Before I got it, I did everything in illustrator because I hated how my lines looked.

It mostly comes down to understanding the fundamentals of what makes a drawing look like what it is.Learning that is waaaay more beneficial than anything

just remember to never go full palcomix

>develop your skills with inking

The reason you think you're getting better results is because of how refined and specific the lines in the original drawing already are. The more certainty your underdrawing provides, the more confident your inking is.

Tracing is just a short term feel good drug. You're better off spending time refining your own sketches, and learning how to draw from the ground up.

Tracing really won't help you learn, it only teaches you how to lay down a specific set of lines for a specific character in a specific pose. It won't teach you how to pose characters 3 dimensionally, how to competently understand anatomy, or how to develop your style.

Instead study construction. Since I'm assuming you want to draw cartoon characters, look at model sheets of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. Observe what 3D shapes they're made of and try drawing them from those shapes. Once you feel comfortable, start putting them in different poses and at different angles.

Im assuming you mean to develop some kind of muscle memory from tracing but yeah it won't help you at all if you ever have to draw without a ref. Like if you wanted to change pose for example.

It WILL help you with precision and MAYBE proportions but even that is debatable since proportions change all the time

Trace the figure
Break them down into shapes
Learn how the artist drew poses
You can probably do the same with realistic figures. Break them down into shapes, study the shading, pick up on proportions, etc.
Tracing for the purpose of quick art is degenerate.

>helped you develop your skills with inking and whatnot?
Yes. Once your hand's comfortable with tracing, move onto inking your own or someone else's sketches. Good practice digital art wise

Is there a place where people put a bunch of uninked sketches? Maybe those would be good to practice on.

get some modeling clay that doesn't dry and make a simple mannequin out of that if you want a reference. that way you can actually feel/move around it.

Tracing develops inking skills, especially if there's certain lines you may want to incorporate. It's not something you obviously do for posting, but it's useful if you're studying lines/lineart and such and may be trying to emulate an artist method. Also helps gain you confidence in your lines/hands.

That being said it's not super helpful without understanding form desu, but alot of industry artist trace when on time crunches too.

youtube.com/watch?v=FVZzYlNIgMI

From the man himself.