Theme
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this journal 
Total prizes reach 1000 
But of course there are always the rules......
Please please please fave the journal!
Make another journal about this giveaway and provide a link of that journal in the comments (this will help spread the word about this giveaway)
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]
Copyrights coupled with tracing is a messy subject that is constantly in view. Kudos on bringing something new to the table.
The lines appear to be muddied & open to interpretation & I agree a better definition that separates tracing as a technique & tracing as a form of copying other's work would be desirable.
Well thought-out argument by yourself there!
~*Ruthie*~
yeh camera obscura is interesting invention. Like a medieval photograph
I use photos as a reference, but I never trace them, or don;t even use the grid... I think sometimes tracing is good to kinda get a hang of proportion or style... Photoshop indeed offers so much handy gadgets for copying. But I think if you trace and make a copy. I mean real copy, not as a reference, but you know like tracing a cartoon design, or photo and then putting the color in painting over the blueprint of a photo - I think in this case one has to quote the sources and call it practice.
Personally for me, even if I use one photo as a kind of main reference I use plenty of others for additional referencing and detail of the face - I need to feel the 3d of the face - the person in completion, and the end result is fairly imprecise, even if you can see the connection to the ref with no real squinting. I think this is what portrait is about - photo has the moment, the turn of the head - portrait somehow continues it - it offers a more complex view of the moment. Hard to explain... and i think people who try to achieve a clinical likeness of a photo by tracing it kinda cheat themselves in the long run, because they can do better with the less perfect but more personal image.
To to each their own, I don't want to argue, I just know what way i chose for myself.
What made me journal about this was reading some comments that made people feel that every time someone lifted a pen to trace they were devil's spawn and sucked so bad they should not even dare call themselves artists. I've been here for 5 years now; yes, I trace occasionally, and I don't appreciate receiving this kind of bashing.
sometimes we all want to add something to something already existing, then we draw fanarts and fanfiction and it becomes a work of art based on someones idea, which is also cool. I liked how ... who was it, who said it... one elderly Hollywood actor - that a true fan is inspired to create something by the original work - and it's a greatest praise.
but yeah.. when it's design - it's vital, ne, one cannot sketch on a glass or wood, of course one makes a blueprint on a paper at first^^. Some media demands that, ne. But it's your original stuff. And Gosh, your designs are mind blowing! i for my part usually borrow some patterns from ancient Japanese patterns....>.> when I want to do something posh with the kimono of my character. Though I'm learning to create my own gradually - it's fun ^_^