I trace reference images for some of my art, yes, and Iâm happy to talk about it, and the reason that I do it. If you read till the end, I even have example images.
I only trace photographs and movie stills, never the art of others, because tracing someone elseâs art would feel wrong to me, and because the hard part for me is the actual likeness of the subject, not the idea or the composition.
This is because I have a condition called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. It means that faces are extremely hard for me to remember, recognize, or tell apart, because I lack the specialization in my brain that a typical human has for parsing and remembering faces. (For a more extreme case than mine, see The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by neurologist Oliver Sacks)
Because of this, the face is always the hardest part to draw, and I actually have to ask others if the face I am drawing is recognizable, and what it is still missing. And every angle of a face feels like a whole new face to learn, because I donât have a 3D âconceptâ of the face in my brain, even though I spend all my days staring at these specific faces.
Fun fact â sometimes the only way I can know for sure that a picture depicts Ryan Gosling is the little birthmark on his cheek next to his left eye, because itâs unique enough to combine with other clues to differentiate.
At first drawing Ryan Goslingâs characters felt overwhelming and difficult to do, because I had to produce a recognizable face of a specific character, and Gooseâs face is particularly tricky to nail correctly.
Despite this, I decided to use tracing as a way to slowly practice and learn his face, and it has actually helped me draw more confidently when I freehand too! So I kept going, and it brought me such joy. Itâs still very difficult, I need to use lots of references and most poses are beyond my abilities, but it brings me such joy that I just focus on the happiness it brings.
The tracing and level of references makes these feel more like technical practice exercises than actual art, but Iâve told myself that I should just keep doing whatever keeps me drawing, even though I have training wheels on, because I still learn something new every time.
As time has gone by Iâve freehanded now and then â some examples of my freehand work, (so in other words, art that is not traced) off the top of my head, are the drawing of Driverâs eye, the Henry doodle for Graey, (not the older Henry picture, thatâs traced) the Luke Glanton portrait, the Holland March 4th of July BBQ art, and my two latest quick sketches (Driver and K on the beach and the 14th anniversary cartoon).
Iâm always open to sharing when a picture has been traced, because Iâm so proud of when Iâm able to draw something freehand, and I want to help destigmatize this for other fan artists.
Iâve got an example below where I show the reference image, the actual trace of the image that acts as the âbridgeâ to map the features of the face for me, and then the finished fanart, where Iâve added weeks of work on top of the traced outline, where I still used the photo for reference, but itâs no longer traced.
You can see how rudimentary the face was at the traced stage, but it was still necessary to help me conceptualize it. The traced part of the eye was just two v-shaped squiggles, but over several days I drew it into a full eye under my own steam, and added all the other details of the face as well, making it slightly more stylized.
In this particular case I had to invent most of the bare upper body from scratch, since the reference image has a shirt, and re-draped how the jacket bunched so the scorpion could be more visible.
Thanks for the question, Anon!
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