To ‘T’ or Not To ‘T’

I could not stop myself from expressing my thoughts when I came across an article that justified tracing, in a famous art magazine. Yes, the same tracing our Drawing and Biology teachers would frown upon and promptly give a ‘redo’ for. Tracing is basically copying a picture from its original source. As the name suggests, you just ‘trace’ the whole image without taking the pains of drawing it with hand along with all the aspects, measurements, shadow & light and of course, perspectives, a very important thing most people just do not care about. When we trace an image, we let our drawing skills take a backseat by cheating deliberately. All the skill then is required is that of coloring. In a way it is ‘manual photocopying’!

Advocates of tracing call it an absolute necessity for creating ‘hyper-realistic’ art. They state that many great painters traced too and also that end result matters and not the means, a point with which I absolutely refuse to concur. Art lies in the skill of the person, in his practice and dexterity to handle sketch and colors. Tracing is like writing an exam with guidebook open and then celebrating full scores. Yes, I consider it nothing more than plain stupidity and cheating the person appreciating and buying your art. It is said that the beauty of art lies in imperfection, there is no art sans it and I find no reason to disagree. In long run, tracing destroys an artist’s talent for the ability to recreate a photograph or a live thing or person accurately on paper which is used to gauge an artist.

To get to this final sketch of Daniel Craig as James Bond took me around nine or ten drafts. I never faced this much difficulty with any portrait but when after more than a week or so I got my base sketch correctly, I felt happy and proud of myself. This work may not be realistic or perfect but it is honest and has helped me brush up my art a bit more. Looking at my works give me inner peace and happiness, precisely for which I am into- fine-art.

Those masters who trace will surely lose their art in a few years while those novices who do so, unfortunately, will never get to develop the same in the first place. So, in my personal view, tracing is nothing more than suicide for an artist. Our Drawing and Biology teachers were indeed right.

By the way, I wonder if tracing is not cheating then what is?