The Official Art thread
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Nah, I bet they've just stood there for ages waiting for the water the wash footprints away.
Make the little stones form a **** on the beach.
Instant art.
Instant art.
Going by the picture, it might be that he's barely potty trained. 
My first time drawing directly on a picture, feels like cheating....
Tracing is not cheating. Disney used to rotoscope over live action footage for some sequences of their old classic animated movies, which is literally the act of tracing over photographs.
It feels like it to me though 
yeah it's really obvious when things are traced/rotoscoped, I don't think it works to well for me as I'm more interested in te actual drawing, if you prefer addin colour then tracing is an obvious short cut that will increase your output.
Not sure if it's for me though I'll finish this and try a few more drawings to see if I can add my own touch to it.
yeah it's really obvious when things are traced/rotoscoped, I don't think it works to well for me as I'm more interested in te actual drawing, if you prefer addin colour then tracing is an obvious short cut that will increase your output. Not sure if it's for me though I'll finish this and try a few more drawings to see if I can add my own touch to it.
Tracing is only cheating if people notice. Seriously, if you can hide the fact that you've traced something then that is a skill in itself. Especially faces.
SenpaiHinds said:
That is an incorrect statement. A Scanner Darkly is blatently rotoscoped and obvious to many people, but it isn't "cheating".
Yellow Submarine also has obvious rotoscoping but still retains all value.
I was thinking about drawing specifically because of the stigma attached to tracing. But even animation gets similar flack, I often see people complaining about naruto or disney when they see evidence of tracing because those are percieved to be "authentic" animation.
WELL THEN THOSE PEOPLE ARE WRONG
Tracing is great if you don't have a lot of time or budget, but as a skill it's not up there on my priorities. I wanted to use it as a tool to improving my colouring skills as I hardly NEVER se colour, it's about time I tried it.
Any tips?
EDIT: Update on the Lion:
Any tips?
Not that kind of tip, I know exactly what you're thinking.
EDIT: Update on the Lion:
I've always been really against tracing. It's a mindset a lot of artists have.
That said, I've noticed major comic book publishers going this route now more often than not. Drawing over human faces. It's obvious, because it's so good. Too good.
It really shows when they have to draw the same person and they don't have a reference to trace for a specific facial expression, and it always looks like utter ****, because their own art style could never match photo-realistic perfection.
I feel that 10 years from now, everyone is gonna be cranking out trace-art and passing it off as their own. And it's why I think my art style is the wave of the future. Because it looks ****ty enough that it will never be confused with a tracers artwork.
Here's to imperfection!
That said, I've noticed major comic book publishers going this route now more often than not. Drawing over human faces. It's obvious, because it's so good. Too good.
It really shows when they have to draw the same person and they don't have a reference to trace for a specific facial expression, and it always looks like utter ****, because their own art style could never match photo-realistic perfection.
I feel that 10 years from now, everyone is gonna be cranking out trace-art and passing it off as their own. And it's why I think my art style is the wave of the future. Because it looks ****ty enough that it will never be confused with a tracers artwork.
Here's to imperfection!
Gah. I really don't understand the 'no-tracing' elitism when it comes to using tracing in artwork. It isn't about perfection or imperfection - those two concepts are incredibly subjective and in my eyes often not applicable, because a style often is what it is and can't be 'more'.
In my mind, it isn't about how one produces the art, but how the final product looks. Everyone has, in their own way, their sort of style and their own way of creating a piece. If you want to use tools at your disposal such as rubbers/erasers, rulers, tracing paper, pencils of various hardness/softness, mechanical pencils and so on, I don't see what the problem is. How you make your piece has a huge impact on how the final product looks, which in turn helps develop a style that you may or may not like. I've done pieces that involve the use of pencil and watercolour only, no rubbing out at all and they look drastically different from pieces that do involve rubbing out, for example. Digital versus hand drawn. Comparisons are endless.
I myself was often criticized by my teachers and classmates during the creation of some of my pieces (not in final product) because they viewed what I did as 'cheating' because I used all the tools at my disposal to create unique-enough art, rather than forcing myself to say, use just my eyes and a pencil with a dash of watercolour like most others around me. In a way it put me off using the style that I developed, because I felt guilty for using such methods (despite people having bought some of my pieces).
Regardless of whether or not people are tracing roughly or as it is, I really don't see a problem with it. Art is art, and in the end you either like a piece or you do not. Heck, a lot of people like to do a rough sketch in pencil before they work on it, which isn't too different from tracing because I've often seen them working on that stage for a long ass time before they start working on top of it.
In my mind, it isn't about how one produces the art, but how the final product looks. Everyone has, in their own way, their sort of style and their own way of creating a piece. If you want to use tools at your disposal such as rubbers/erasers, rulers, tracing paper, pencils of various hardness/softness, mechanical pencils and so on, I don't see what the problem is. How you make your piece has a huge impact on how the final product looks, which in turn helps develop a style that you may or may not like. I've done pieces that involve the use of pencil and watercolour only, no rubbing out at all and they look drastically different from pieces that do involve rubbing out, for example. Digital versus hand drawn. Comparisons are endless.
I myself was often criticized by my teachers and classmates during the creation of some of my pieces (not in final product) because they viewed what I did as 'cheating' because I used all the tools at my disposal to create unique-enough art, rather than forcing myself to say, use just my eyes and a pencil with a dash of watercolour like most others around me. In a way it put me off using the style that I developed, because I felt guilty for using such methods (despite people having bought some of my pieces).
Regardless of whether or not people are tracing roughly or as it is, I really don't see a problem with it. Art is art, and in the end you either like a piece or you do not. Heck, a lot of people like to do a rough sketch in pencil before they work on it, which isn't too different from tracing because I've often seen them working on that stage for a long ass time before they start working on top of it.
But art teachers will criticise you for "cheating" because you won't learn as effectively by using shortcuts. Tracing in particular is a point of contention because when most people do it it looks terrible, and always the exact same kind of terrible. The main problem is that real things don't have outlines so it's really hard to "suggest" things like nasolabial creases and teeth without blurring the line between reality and abstraction. Like this:
I dunno what you mean. The pencil stage is about planning the dynamic of the artwork and testing where the outlines/shading is going to go. With tracing you don't get to do any of that, which is a huge disadvantage in my opinion.
Obviously if you just want to copy an image then go ahead and trace it, but in all other situations tracing seems like a huge limiter to me.
N0body said:
I dunno what you mean. The pencil stage is about planning the dynamic of the artwork and testing where the outlines/shading is going to go. With tracing you don't get to do any of that, which is a huge disadvantage in my opinion.
Obviously if you just want to copy an image then go ahead and trace it, but in all other situations tracing seems like a huge limiter to me.
SenpaiHinds said:But art teachers will criticise you for "cheating" because you won't learn as effectively by using shortcuts. Tracing in particular is a point of contention because when most people do it it looks terrible, and always the exact same kind of terrible. The main problem is that real things don't have outlines so it's really hard to "suggest" things like nasolabial creases and teeth without blurring the line between reality and abstraction. Like this:
Yeah, what you say is true. When I went to secondary school, that sort of thing was rather common. Guess it works well enough for cartoons, but that sort of tracing results in flat, two-dimensional drawings that in themselves aren't particularly advanced. Kinda the sort of thing you'd see early on, but not the sort of tracing I'm talking about.
I'm personally speaking about art at a more advanced stage, such as finals in GCSEs and A-Level art in the UK, guess something I did not make clear enough. It isn't really 'cutting corners' in the sense you describe at that level, but a matter of optimizing ones work because it means cutting time spent on getting the basic shapes of a scene done, therefore giving you more time to work on shading, details and if needed, extra layers (such as application of paint). It depends on what style you're working on; I personally introduced multiple layers using various methods (such as lower levels using water colours, upper levels using pencil or pen).
Digital art in some ways could be argued to be 'cutting corners' or otherwise 'cheating' (but by no means do I view it as such); tools at your disposal allow you to revert changes, fill areas quickly, give you brushes that can be tweaked and fine tuned in size and shape and then layering allows you to do stuff you would otherwise not be able when working with graphite.
SenpaiHinds said:
I'm not entirely sure what you mean; I've done outlines freehand and with tracing paper by tracing say a scene or a landscape and have had no issues working in outlines/shading.
It doesn't prevent you from doing so in any shape or form, merely speeding up the process by giving you the ability to quickly define hard edges and soft edges that may contribute to the buildup of a scene (and assist in detailing of more complex objects such as trees and their various branches and leaves, which can be rather laborious when you've got a scene with many such objects), versus spending longer doing it on a blank piece of paper in front of you. Although some people may trace a line as-is, I do however prefer to keep edges 'rough' and organic looking.
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