#using references

A gentle art community clarity moment ✨

There’s been a little bit of confusion floating around art spaces lately, so let’s pause, breathe, and untangle two terms that often get mixed together: pose blocking and tracing. They may sound similar at a glance, but they live in very different creative neighborhoods.

Pose blocking is a learning tool—think of it as sketching the skeleton of a pose. Artists use references to understand balance, weight, and motion, then rebuild the figure using simple shapes or gesture lines. From there, the artwork grows into something new, personal, and uniquely theirs. No copied lines, no mirrored proportions—just study, practice, and interpretation. This is a normal, healthy part of learning how bodies move.

Tracing, by contrast, is when an artist draws directly over another image, replicating its lines and structure. The final result closely matches the original in proportion and composition. Without permission, credit, or meaningful transformation, tracing crosses ethical lines—especially when it’s presented as original work.

The heart of the difference is this:

Pose blocking is learning from a reference

Tracing is copying of a reference

Using references isn’t wrong. Studying anatomy isn’t wrong. Learning how poses work isn’t wrong. What matters is whether the artist is rebuilding the idea or reproducing someone else’s work.

Clear language helps everyone—especially newer artists—feel safer learning, growing, and asking questions without fear of misplaced accusations.

Something's off

Fix the eyes, nose, and lips

Yes, I do love to draw hands…

First page are all referenced from Dungeon meshi, they have very soft hands so it was a bit difrent to my usual.

(Some are redraws of other art I saw online)

Awww thank you!! Okay This is gonna be a bit longer It’s a mix of a lot of things and a lot of the things around me. I not only love to draw cluttered places, but I also always kinda lived in lovely cluttered places. So a lot of inspiration is just taken from the things around me, my own memories, and the things I like.

My latest pic for example is something that is created by just an idea I have of a kitchen, based on things I know and things I’ve seen. I didn’t have a specific reference here.

I mostly always start with my characters and then very roughly sketch the room I have in mind around them.

And based on this I create my perspective lines and map out the space a bit clearer. Measure my distance with the perspective lines and create my surfaces. 

And then I go into lineart. First for the surface only.

And when I have all my surfaces I only then go into my detailed clutter and add it all over time.

As said, this kitchen was fully made up and only really got shaped into form on my canvas.But I for example have a gas stove and one of those espresso cans at home, so just a quick walk into my kitchen allows me to look up certain items if I’m unsure how they look.

But there are also a couple of items by now that I have stored in my own personal mental library. When you look at my pieces closely there are a bunch of items that I have in several of them. Poles, electric cables, a certain type of window, stacked bowls and cups, soda cans, etc And those are all items that I can draw by now without any reference. And then there are some new items that I have to look up, so I mostly just do a quick google search to get an idea on how they look. For example this bedroom piece was created like the kitchen above and just based on an idea I had in mind, rooms I knew or saw somewhere and then just created out of my head. I started with a rough sketch

And then continued the same way as with the kitchen piece. But here I had some very typical late 90s items in mind, and as I could draw the bed, room, window, and some small details just out of my head, there were a couple of items I looked up on google to get the right look for them!

So I created a small library from pics I found on google and just put them on the side of my pic to have them as a ref.It doesn’t have to be a perfect ref. Just a good enough pic to give me an idea of how an item looks like.

Sometimes I have an idea of a room but want something specific and it should look more or less authentic so I go on a google search for similar places.I still like to create my own version but I look at certain structures and items that those places have and try to incorporate them into my piece

Like with this one for example. I just used some photos from google that gave me a good idea of a place like this.

Many of those items are still chosen from my mental library, but I also have some things I look up and some loose references. 

Keep in mind that I’m doing this for some time now! And I build up my mental library and how I want to draw things over time! This is not something that comes over night. It takes time! And it comes by repeating things and drawing them over and over.

I also love to take photos and when I visit new places or see something I like I take photos. One because I love to take photos, but also as a future ref. And some of those photos I use as loose refs as in the examples above. And sometimes I even pretty much just redraw them. Because I really like the structure, or want that specific look or even specific place!

For example I took this photo when I was in New York and as the Aran and Tao story takes place in New York I really wanted to create a place like this! A structure and street similar to the photo.

And as you can see especially the train structure and street look is something I used for this drawing here

So long answer short

It’s a mix of things!I have a good mental library by now, I like to draw the things I know and the things around me, and when I go for a certain city, or street look I like to work based on photos I took by myself and use them as refs.

OH

OH MY GOD

UH

I JUST PRACTICE A LOT???