de Corbin
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Making tracing paper your friend
If you're a creative artist, you probably know that tracing is bad - it's a form of cheating, like seducing your neighbor's wife.
Well, i just want to say that seducing... er... I mean, tracing... isn't always a bad thing.
I go through reams of tracing paper every year because I don't draw very well. Actually, I can draw, but what I mean to say is that I'm a not natural at it. Drawing is hard for me, and involves a lot of drawing, erasing, redrawing, and drawing again.
I'm also very picky about my composition - I want everything to be in the exact configuration that I want it to be in - but I can't do that until I actually see all the different elements on paper.
So what to do? Maybe I should just give up and become a CPA. Nah... that would be boring...
I've found that tracing paper helps me a lot.
Let me show you what I do...
Here's my first rough attempt to draw something:
OK, not so good. The woman looks like she is suffering from some congenital deformity. So I slap a piece of tracing paper on top, and redraw the parts I don't like:
Better. Now I want to work on that little tower that doesn't look quite right. Slap on another piece of tracing paper:
Now I have to add in a cat, but I'm not exactly sure how big to make it, or exactly how I want to position it. So guess what? More tracing paper:
OK, you get the idea. I can keep redrawing, and use the tracing paper to move things around until I get exactly the composition I want. At this point, I take all those little pieces of tracing paper and flip them upside down on a sheet of clean paper, and rub them with the back of a spoon to transfer the lead from the tracing paper to the clean sheet of paper. Then I go over the lines with a pencil, making any last minute corrections:
And finally, I slap one more sheet of tracing paper on top of the drawing, and trace everything out, nice and neat:
I flip the tracing paper on to my final, good sheet of paper, and rub it with the back of a spoon again...
...which gives me a ghost image, which I can go over with a pen, then color:
And then that's it. The hard part is done. Now I can start having fun with the final work...
*******
I don't just do my drawings like this - I use the same technique when I lay out a design for a piece of jewelry. I trace it over and over again until I get it exactly the way I want it.
Never let a lack of talent stop you from enjoying art!
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12/29/2008, 7:13 pm
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DebbrahF
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Re: Making tracing paper your friend
For working with materials other than paper, tracing has other benefits...
Instead of penciling a pattern onto glass or wood when I'm engraving or carving, I'll work it out on paper or on the computer. I can then trace/copy/print it onto a special clear sticky plastic and put that on the wood or glass. This way is much easier to make multiples (saves hours of penciling on the glass) and the pattern often is more clearly visible, sticks better and cleans up better. I also can save the pattern for future use.
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For good or ill, luck and opportunity are 90%+ preparation...
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2/7/2009, 12:26 am
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TexasMadness
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Re: Making tracing paper your friend
Wow, that's a great tip Corbin. My aunt is an architect and uses tracing paper a lot to change a layout quickly to see if a different idea is better. I can see how that would be really useful for fine art as well. Thanks for sharing!
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2/8/2009, 12:13 pm
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de Corbin
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Re: Making tracing paper your friend
quote:
DebbrahF wrote:
For working with materials other than paper, tracing has other benefits...
Instead of penciling a pattern onto glass or wood when I'm engraving or carving, I'll work it out on paper or on the computer. I can then trace/copy/print it onto a special clear sticky plastic and put that on the wood or glass. This way is much easier to make multiples (saves hours of penciling on the glass) and the pattern often is more clearly visible, sticks better and cleans up better. I also can save the pattern for future use.
That sounds like a good idea - I'm thinking that I should start a thread about using the computer to produce patterns - I like my scanner because I can upsize or down size drawings for metalwork, and make multiple copies of things like earring designs which I cut out in metal...
TexasM, I do this because I can't draw - but it is also true that you can try out a lot of different things quickly - which is a big help in composition. Did you ever do something, then decide "If that thing was a quarter inch to the left, it would have been perfect"? This helps with that a bit.
Oh, and tracing paper is "hard" so you can erase it cleanly much easier than you can a sheet of nice paper. The paper I was using for that drawing is very delicate - it's a handmade Japanese paper. Any erasing on it will ruin it completely, so I have to be correct before I start on that paper. I'm very jealous of the people who are skilled enough to work directly on the final sheet of paper...
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2/9/2009, 2:02 pm
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Sorsha Akai
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Re: Making tracing paper your friend
[blonde moment]....so that's how you get things from the tracing paper to the actual paper.....wow....thanks! [/blonde moment]
I'm a natural blonde, so I'm allowed to say that. And seriously, I never knew how that took place before, it always confused me to no end, lol! I would sit there thinking "wait, but I don't want my final drawing to be on a sheet of tracing paper! How do you....what's the....oh, I give up!"
Thank you Corbin! 
--- "Make Your Dreams Out of Paper Mache." - Beck
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3/6/2009, 1:07 am
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