So, I know that tracing of other people's artwork is frowned upon and I completely agree that if someone is tracing another person's artwork and selling it as their own (instead of just using tracing as a means to learn how to be a better artist) is bad.

My question is, what about tracing photographs?

Like let's say I want to create a cover image of a flower but I'm having difficulty drawing the flower. Would it be acceptable to trace a photograph of a flower using my own style or not?

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Unless the pic has some kinda copyright I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to 🙏🏽

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One issue is that realistic proportions from the picture might not translate well into a drawing that's not realistic.

My suggested workflow would be this:
In your paint program, drop down a layer of nothing but white. You aren't going to be drawing anything on this; it's a backdrop. Later, you can go and change it to a dark color to see if there are any mistakes that stand out; accidental splashes of white and such.

Put the photo on the next layer on top of it. Reduce the opacity on that layer so you can see the picture, but faintly, so you can easily tell what you drew.

Stick a transparent layer on top of that. Change your painting color to dark blue or something you aren't normally going to be drawing in. Start drawing over the picture, trying to get the main shapes and such. Occasionally hid the picture layer.

Once that's drawn, hide the picture layer, set the layer you just drew to low opacity, and start redrawing what you traced to actually look decent in a more normal color. Repeat this as many times as you need to, and don't worry about following the lines. You want it to look good, not like a copy of the original picture.

When you are ready to color things, stick a layer under your line layer and color there. You may also want layers to do shading and highlights in.

(Also, if you are using a program with vector layers and curve tools, doing the tracing with those would probably be easier...)

--Sweetie Belle

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Draw Lucy