Discussion: after you get to a point where you can loomis up a head, shade a couple fruits, draw some tubes n cubes, and generally get a scents of space and time and stuff, and you have a specific thing you are setting out to do, just trace. Grid transfer. Graphite paper transfer. Photobash. Collect and study dozens of references and have them encyclopedically available to recall by keeping them stored in specific rooms with specific people in your memory palace. Whatever.

Unless your goal in a project is to jerk off about how well you can eyeball proportions and hand draw something exactly in frame as you intended without measuring and transferring objective data… just fucking trace.

You don’t have to full blown trace that’s boring. Normally what I’ve been doing is just goofing around with an underdrawing that doesn’t necessarily help all that much other than avoiding wonk eye and lsd proportions, while adding a bunch of shit that I have to cover up. The process of tracing itself is meditative and reflective and allows you to just kind of drive around the forms and textures and lighting and it’s just kind of fun.

All types of drawing are fun. You should, as a completionist, learn everything. But if you’re just trying to fuck around with painting shit you like looking at, and you may be overwhelmed maybe the idea of free form drawing it just trace bro.

What are arguments for and against?

(dictated but not red, yes spelled wrong)