The image above was the closest I got to tracing, I didn't directly draw over the original picture, but I did try to replicate it directly side by side. This was in 2010, before I tried to become an artist and before I started taking anyone's money in exchange for artwork. (I couldn't find a better version of the original drawing to figure out the name of the artist to include it here)

After I made that drawing I figured out how bad tracing would be later on specially if I accept getting paid to draw original work, so I never did it again, everything else I ever drew after that was only my own work, and only used references for inspiration or because I didn't know where some muscles are, how they behave in different poses, stuff like that, but I never traced or tried to replicate anything directly.

That's probably why my improvement has been slow, but has been real, by my own limited skills and talent.

RossDraws.

A few days ago it became public that RossDraws, a popular portrait artist who paints beautiful girls and has a successful Youtube channel, has been tracing over pictures of models without their permission and without crediting them.

Video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAavbMyEU_E

Which explains why more often than not he skips showing the process of making the sketch in his videos, he knew he was doing something questionable, he left unanswered the requests from a model asking him for credit at least... until he was caught that is, after that he publicly apologized the next day, and went back to a year old piece to add credit to the model finally.

Other times he created photos to use in his painting instead of plagiarizing someone else's, which felt right because he was the author of the content he was painting over later on. The questionable action is when you use someone else's content heavily without permission, without disclosure and without crediting. You are profiting off of someone else's work, lying to your employer, client and/or audience.

Greg Land.

But successful artists being tracers is way more common than one would like to believe, they take shortcuts that makes them very productive, and companies paying them really like the high production output. Yes, this one case is mainstream high profile artist working for massive corporations, and he's a plagiarist.

Greg Land, a successful comic artist for Marvel and others, whose whole career is based on tracing porn models and other artists' drawings.

Video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bshNOtERfVI

The video is pretty thorough, it's fascinating.

When tracing is right?

In my opinion there's a way to trace other's artworks without sacrificing your reputation, and that is by fullfilling at least some if not all of the following conditions:

- You're not profiting from it.
- You're disclosing the fact.
- You're crediting the original author.
- You have the permission or rights over the original content.

Main reasons to trace under those conditions would be for the pursue of learning, or cutting corners legally in a professional environment with tight deadlines, and that's totally acceptable, but has to be done right.

Otherwise, hiding and profiting instantly makes it plagiarism... theft. And that's bad yo.

I'm a relatively small artist, not many know my name, but surprisingly I have come across a few instances of people plagiarizing my content, removing my name or watermark and claiming themselves as the author of the drawing, or tracing over my drawing. I imagine it happens a lot more often for popular artists who have a lot more people admiring their artwork.

Don't trace. But if you're gonna do it anyway, at least don't plagiarize.


What do you think? Let me know your opinions about this.