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Annoyed 
I'm actually copying a great idea I got from
in her journal. A good DA friend of mine 
could really do with some extra cash from commissions right now, so if you're looking for a present for yourself or for someone you know, why not visit her etsy store and help her out a little. [link]Here's a little sampling of her art
:thumb70393455:
A discussion that's got some heated comments over the last few weeks here at DA is the discussion about tracing and copyright. I stayed out of it for most of the time feeling that art is one of the areas where taste and belief is involved and arguing with people about their tastes and beliefs (and politics!) is about as productive as transporting water in a sieve.
I did have a very productive and meaningful discussion with
about it a few days ago in his journal, but this morning I read another article on the topic [link] and also the rather vitriolic comments that came with it, and I finally decided I was miffed enough to devote a journal article to the topic.As an art historian I find the whole "tracing is trash" attitude rather amusing, as many great artists including Vermeer van Delft, Canaletto and Joshua Reynolds all used a device called a camera obscura quite widely in their work. A camera obscura will project a precise image of a scene onto paper where it can be sketched (i.e. traced!) and then painted. Other artists employed complex arrangements of strings to "project" small drawings onto huge areas of wall or ceiling when drawing frescos in churches and palaces, such as the Italian church painter Pozzo. Portrait painters like the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti had in his studio photos of his models in the exact poses he ended up painting them in - again there are simple geometry constructions that allow you to project points from a photograph onto a grid on canvas before painting, which again is nothing more than tracing.
Even though tracing has become much easier these days with Photoshop layering it is a practice probably as old Aristotle who first worked out the principles of the camera obscura around 350 BC. If we scorn tracing we also have to blackball half of western traditional art.
Tracing is a technique, people, nothing more and nothing less! I can use tracing in a multitude of different ways, and not all have anything to do with copyright issues or with fan-art where we're now supposed to stick everything that uses tracing. For example I use tracing extensively in my jewelry designs where I start with a rough pencil sketch, superimpose a sheet of vellum and tidy up the pencil scribbles with ink (i.e. I TRACE!), then I scan the image, use the computer to scale it down to jewelry-size, print it out again and if needs be even trace over it again until I have a paper cartoon that I can cut out and use as a template for my silver clay pieces. So does that make all my silver jewelry fan-art now?
Recently I did the same for a tattoo commission, where the final design went through three stages of pencil drawings, trace-over, refinement, more trace-over, until I finally had a design that was so sharp and precise it could be inked. I didn't use anyone else's art for it, I just traced and retraced my own until I was 100% happy with it. Again, fan art?!
What happens if someone takes a still-life photo and then instead of putting the photo in their gallery, instead traces over it and then uses the outlines to produce a watercolor image? Is this somehow less worthy than putting up the photo? Is it fan art?
Tracing and copyright are totally different issues and I wish DA had adopted another term for what they are really trying to get their hands around – it's drawing or painting over other people's art or photographs. I wish they'd call that Paint-over as Aeires suggested to me in our discussion, or they make a gallery separate from fan-art calling it Copied Art for tracing (and other forms of exact duplication) involving other people's work as a basis.
* If you ask me to make artwork available as a print, please check if it uses copyrighted material. DA will not take print submissions that are based on such materials. This means, no prints of drawings based on movies or TV shows like the Harry Potter Movies, Brokeback Mountain, CSI etc. If you want a drawing as a print please note me instead.
Commission status: open
Drawings:
Sirius and OC: received
A Murder of Crows: received
Catriona McGillivray for TheVirginian: finishing drawing this weekend
"Guitar Wizard" for Miki Petrovic: posted on 02/09
Jewelry:
"Lucian" in green for Michelle: shipped on 02/14
"A Present for Narcissa" for Dellessanna: focal is ready, working on necklace components
Serpent focal and closure for redLillith: received
If you want to know more about my art:
did a great interview with me. [link]
In my decorative art classes we had some designs we trace and it`s just the outline, the important thing here is the tecnique to paint we are taught, the same with most classes I`ve attended.
It`s a very delicate subject and well quite honestly I liked the way you explained it.
I am a fanartist at heart, it doesn`t mean my work is "less" than any other artists. To start putting fan art in a "low level" isn`t very nice or the "witch hunt - trace hunt" you talk about down in the comment. I am very hurt by this and lately I even wanted to quit DA because loving fan art and seeing it so put down, just makes me so sad...
I use many references in my pantings, I usually put them all together to see if they will work, then when I have the compostion of the painting, I use the grid method, and proportion checking, because that is what works for me now (I am a learning artist), if I had to blow up a design I would possible get a proyector and trace over my design, but I use the grid since I can`t afford a proyector.
I think this is such a delicate subject, and my english so horrible, that when I read that the pupils of Michaelangelo traced his comics, I didn`t undestand what "comic" is or knew about this camara obscura.
Thanks for enlightening me... It`s amazing that you did study art history to such details you can actually confirm this is a tecnique.
I love the way you put everything into perspective. For me tracing is a tool - nothing else. When I was very young I traced - it helped my hand eye co-ordination, it helped my understanding of perspective, in short it improved my drawing skills. Now, I trace an outline of a body when designing garments with clients and draw in the garment lines freehand. It makes a much better image in a short time than I am able to create on my own. My drawing skills are not good - my art is my dressmaking... and my devaitions will continue to be posted as clothing or costume where appropriate
I do not consider traing other peoples work and then inking/colouring or whatever to be original work, however tracing is an invaluable tool in learning to draw, to control a pencil, to see how shapes change with perspective etc
When I discussed your jorunal with my son *VOLT-reborn he commented that the definition meant most of his original work should be classified as fan art as rather than start fresh from scratch, if he messed up on a piece of work he'd trace the good and scrap the bad. That was of course in the days befor he worked digitally - now he uses photoshop for much of his work I'm pretty sure all of his original work contain elements of tracing from previous layers
A new definition needs to be written...