A practice that can thwart artistic growth is tracing projections from a photograph or subject rather than drawing them free hand. Still, no other issue in the field of painting stimulates as much passion, anger, finger-pointing and self-justification as
that of tracing a projected image onto the painting surface before painting. We hear arguments that tracing is just one of the many tools available to us, that it saves time and energy, that the grand masters of the past used similar available methods (not true for the majority of them), that many artists trace but won't admit
it--all these in favor of projections. Those against such tracings argue it's not honest, it's deceiving the viewer by representing skills the artist does not own, that it's not professional. I have an additional argument against tracing. From my viewpoint as artist and as teacher, what we produce is a by-product of what we experience. If we shortchange or shortcut that experience, we are robbing ourselves of whatever it could have given us.
And without the experience, we will never know what that could have been. Tracing shortchanges the drawing experience. Drawing can be a gateway to infinite discovering when you switch your attitude away from what you are doing to what you are seeing. That means that you are exploring what is there, allow your hand
to follow what your eyes are seeing. That practiced skill enabled Michelangelo's greatness. Here is one of his drawings for the Sistine Chapel. The key is to pay more attention to what your eyes are seeing than you do to what your pencil is doing. This a type of exploring that can provide an amazing experience even though it feels terribly awkward at first. (See Quick Tip 462 beginning at frame 5:00.) But here's the deal: Taking this attitude can lead you toward accurate drawing without any viewing device, and the results contains a life that tracing cannot give. Here is a one of my studies done towards a series of cow paintings I did. One characteristic we find in all master painters is that they take nothing for granted. Regardless of the number of drawings we do of any subject, there is always some new to discover about it. No matter how many times Andrew Wyeth had seen
and drawn the Kuerner house, he never tired of discovering more with drawing after drawing. Have yourselves an exciting weekend of discoverying!
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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