quick chat about reference tracing
contrary to the discourse arguments, I fully believe that tracing is not inherently a problematic way to use a reference! you just have to learn how to trace things the right way, and how to reconfigure a sketch to the correct proportions of your characters and art style.
observational referencing is also a good skill to develop, which can be used alongside tracing to really use those references to their full potential.
here are some quick sketches to show how reference tracing can work (reference taken from adorka stock, a free resource for artists) @adorkastock
(image description: first image is a photo taken from Adorkastock, showing a woman sitting on a wooden bench and wearing a bodysuit with contour lines for art reference. She is leaning forward heavily, with one hand raised near her face as she looks towards something off screen.
second image shows four sketches of an elf character sitting on a bench in similar poses. The first sketch is drawn from memory, with a totally different angle, leg pose, and posture. The second sketch was done while observing the reference, so it gets closer to the correct angle and posture but is still a little different. Third sketch is a tight trace of the reference, with the only major difference being the face shape and the addition of a tail. The fourth sketch is a loose trace, which looks more lively and weighted than the tight trace, also giving the character a little more stylization and different proportions from the reference.
third image shows four different characters loosely traced on top of the reference image, each with their own body proportions. In order, they are a fat dwarven woman, a slender amphibious goblin, a pig-like gnome, and a humanoid bird person. end description)
loose tracing mixed with observation, memory, and imagination, will typically lead to better results than a tight detailed trace of a reference image, if your goal is just to use an image as a reference for something new.
If your goal is to recreate an image more directly, such as a master study of an art piece or photo you admire, or a screencap redraw from your favorite show, then some detail tracing will help you place things correctly while your own observational skills and knowledge of art techniques will allow you to add your own flair to the final art piece. a perfect one-to-one trace is generally not the best way to go, because you still want it to be a new piece of art! studies are how we learn, so it's important to make sure you really are focusing on at least one specific skill and not just copying without putting extra thought into your work.
and then, of course, if the reference image you're tracing is something you made yourself to begin with, you can do literally whatever you want with it. including a straight one-to-one copy, because it's your image anyway and there is absolutely no art theft happening there.
the only real reason to discourage people from doing one-to-one copy tracing is a concern over theft. we can talk for hours about whether or not it's good for skill building or preventing artists from growing, but at the end of the day we have to acknowledge that any artist who actually wants to grow is not going to restrict themself to only detailed trace works anyway. No one is being stopped from growing just because sometimes they trace a reference! you don't know their routines, or their process. If you want to grow, you do a lot of different things to make it happen! So let's not gatekeep and look down our noses at any artist we deem "less skilled" and make them believe that the best artists are just so perfect that they no longer need references.
