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How to Trace? Is it OK to Trace as a Portrait Artist?

/ Sketching Tips and Techniques Video Tutorial
/ By Matt Philleo
/ 28 COMMENTS

Let’s address the elephant in the room: tracing as a portrait artist. Is it OK? Is it cheating?

I’m going to answer that question today.

Up until COVID-19 hit, I participated in a Fall studio art tour every year. An artist on the tour, who was also the founder and coordinator for it, had some strong opinions about tracing.

“Matt, tell me you didn’t trace that sketch for the mural project you did.”

“I’m not going to lie,” I told her. “I did use a projector to get the proportions up, and then refine it freehand.”

“How could you do that? What if your client found out?”

“Well, first of all, this project was done for my church, as a gift,” I replied. “And secondly, I would be upfront with them if they asked about my process.”

Is it OK to Trace as a Portrait Artist — Photo by Dan Reiland, used with permission.

She chided me in a motherly kind of way, and I listened respectfully and smiled.

This is the first time I ever really thought about the concept of tracing as being a bad thing, at least to this degree. But is it?

I’m going to give you 5 reasons why I believe tracing is OK.

Tracing saves time. Let’s face it. Drawing freehand, or with a grid is a time-consuming process. You have to measure, re-measure your proportions, and if you lack much drawing experience, often have to settle for eyes that are too large, noses that are unnatural, and mouths that aren’t aligned properly. I have many commissions to do, and so tracing expedites my workflow. I don’t trace all of my portraits, but for some, I choose to do so.
Tracing helps you get accurate proportions, especially for a large painting. I had always drawn freehand and never even thought of tracing until 1999, when I did mural work with a well-known Florida muralist, Bob Jenny. He had hired me to do a series of murals depicting army medics serving in American wars at some VA hospitals. They were large—two 6′ x 30′ murals. One day, he came by to check on my work. He saw me meticulously sketching a battle scene, freehand. “We’re going to be here for months if you do it that way!” he exclaimed. “Let me show you how to do it.”And he taught me how to use an overhead projector to transfer the design up quickly and effectively.
Tracing helps you to see distinctions in value. When you trace, especially using a projector, details become blurred and you readily notice differences in value—those distinct shapes that create the planes, the forms we see—whether they are the forehead, nose, cheekbones, or locks of hair. You can trace along the edges of those distinctions. It can be a beneficial exercise to help you in your portrait painting.
There is historical precedent for tracing. Jan Vermeer reportedly used a camera obscura to project scenes from outside onto his surface to create exact replications of landscapes. So there is so shame. I think we can all appreciate the work of Vermeer. Art historians and art appreciators alike marvel at his skills.
Tracing is a tool. It can be used like a contractor uses a nail gun to frame a house. The same work could be done by old-fashioned hammer and nail, but the nail-gun will do it faster. Obviously, this metaphor doesn’t translate entirely in terms of portrait painting, but the idea I’m trying to convey is that it’s just a tool.

Now, with all that said, here are some caveats on tracing.

If you ONLY trace, and never do freehand sketching or use the grid method, your portrait painting skills will suffer. You will either stagnate, or take a very long time to progress past the beginners’ level. I get emails often from artists asking me to help them with skin tones, but because they haven’t put in the time to observe proportions and render them on the canvas, they don’t create realistic value shapes. The result is a portrait that looks falls far short of their goals. Anatomy and values must come first, skin tones after. And freehand sketching is the best way to develop it. I drew freehand for years as a child, before beginning to use acrylic in high school, and the observational skills I learned were priceless. Tracing is not cheating. But if you rely on it too much, it will cheat you, as an artist, of growth. This is why I teach my classes mostly using the grid method. It’s a good middle-of-the-road option between freehand and tracing. It helps artists create a solid sketch, so they can do a portrait they’re proud of without having to spend years getting proficient at freehand sketching. It helps them to see proportions and shapes, and then carry that confidence into their painting process!
Tracing helps you to quickly establish proportions on your canvas, but it by itself, it’s not enough. The process often omits fine details and nuances that can only be achieved by refining your sketch with freehand sketching. In fact, tracing can flat-out distort your photo reference. In a scene, it totally obliterates the distinction between foreground and background. It can cause areas with lighter value to exceed the proper boundaries. If you want an accurate sketch to work from, you must evaluate your tracing and go back on top of it with more work, to fix mistakes and supply detail that is lacking.
If you trace, be honest about your process. You are not obligated to tell the whole world, “I traced this!” But if your client or Facebook follower asks, did you do this freehand (most will never ask) be sure to answer them honestly and confidently about your process. If you don’t feel ashamed about it, they won’t think any less of you as an artist. Even with a traced/ projected sketch, it still takes an incredible amount of skill to do the remaining work: selecting colors, mixing them, applying them in the right places, and finishing with detail.

Here is a fun video I did on tracing. I go over a few of the ideas I shared with you above, and I also show you, if you choose to trace, how to do it, using a painting I’m doing right now as an example…

Is it OK to Trace as a Portrait Artist?

What are YOUR thoughts on tracing? Let me know below, in the comments!

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this tutorial and watch the video. That means a lot to me. I hope you find it very helpful in your portrait painting.

Yours for Better Portraits,

P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me kno

How to Paint A 48″ x 72″ Commissioned Portrait: My Adventure

Last week, I shared with you the beginning of my adventure on painting a huge 48″ x 72″ portrait.

Thank you so much for all your kind words and feedback on this project!

In that post, I mentioned how I tracked down the canvas, brought it back, and then created a layout for the portrait with Photoshop.

Today, I’m going to show you the sketching process, and with that, maybe spark a little controversy! 🙂

Controversy? How can sketching be controversial?

Well, there’s a huge debate in the artist community on tracing/ using projectors and whether or not it is cheating.

I’m going to show you the process I used and argue that it is not cheating. But I am open to discuss it.

First of all, I wondered with this big canvas, “should sketch on it using the grid method, or even freehand?” I’ve done hundreds of freehand sketches for portrait drawings and paintings, and in fact, it was the only way I ever drew anything from my childhood up until I started doing murals in 1999, when I was 22.

Then, through a contact I made while studying at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, I got in touch with Bob Jenny, a prolific and successful muralist from Ft. Lauderdale. We did several murals together, starting with two 6′ x 30′ murals in Womack Army Hospital in Fort Bragg, NC, and then a couple in Kenner Clinic in Fort Lee, VA.

Here are some images of those murals…

Mural Portfolio_4 copy.jpg

“You paint like an artist!” Bob chided me when he saw my technique. I used tiny brushes, piddling away on a large surface.

It would be like trying to paint your average 16″ x 20″ portrait using toothpicks.

Not only that, but I attempted to sketch out an expansive scene of the army medic serving in World War I & II in freehand on the hospital wall.

It looked good, but it was taking way, way too long. It wasn’t just a matter of it eating into our profits, but it was also the fact that there were many contractors working in the hospital, and the thing had to be done by a certain time.

So Bob showed me how to paint like a painter. He taught me how to use large brushes and even a roller to cover large areas quickly and effectively.

For setting up the sketch, Bob instructed me to use a projector. Some artists spend a fortune on snazzy art projectors that can project a regular photo print on the wall, but Bob used just an overhead projector–the kind that people used for teaching and media presentations, “back in the day” before PowerPoint became the thing.

You just make a transparency of your photo reference at your local copy shop and you’re ready to go. Or, you can buy transparency film that runs in your inkjet home printer and make your own.

Using the projector on a mural or large painting saves a ton of time. It’s very difficult and time consuming to get accurate proportions drawing freehand over a large surface. Your brain just can’t see the whole picture. So, I learned to use a projector while working with Bob, and it’s been great for quickly getting a sketch up on my canvas or panel.

Some artists feel like it’s cheating.

I don’t.

I see it as a tool. It’s the same way you would expect a carpenter to use a ruler, level, clamps, power saws, power sanders, nail-guns, etc. to get his job done quickly, reliably, and effectively.

But as an artist, you don’t want to use it all the time. It’s important to learn how to draw freehand as well. You can use a grid to start with. And then go completely freehand as you gain confidence. These drawing skills will translate into painting skills–because painting a realistic portrait is always fighting the internal battle of painting what you actually see, rather than what you think you see.

If you want to paint a portrait from a photo, and do it well, it will be a lot easier if you learn how to draw.

With this 48″ x 72″ portrait, the size is large enough that I decided to use a projector to accurately transfer my Photoshop design onto the canvas. I thought about using the grid system for a moment, but I decided it would take too long to set up all the grid lines, seal them in, and then try to mask them out at the end after doing the sketch.

The figures in the portrait just have too much detail for that to work, not to mention the background.

So I set up my projector. I use an Apollo Horizon 2, which I purchased for about $200 several years ago.

I printed off the design on my inkjet printer and then laid it flat on the surface of the projector.

Now, you will find that the lightweight plastic sheet will want to curl on you from the projector’s heat. So, if you put a piece of glass on the top (I tape the edges with masking tape, so it doesn’t cut me by accident) it will be enough to keep your transparency in place.

After that, I set up my canvas vertically against the wall. I have pretty small studio, but the room is long, so I faced it so I had room get the projection lined up straight on the canvas.

Next, I turned on the projector and lined it up. There were a few inches on either side that I couldn’t cover, but that would be easy enough to fill in later. Also, I needed to move that chair out of the way! 🙂

I used a sepia toned-colored pencil to do the tracing. I work from the left to the right, keeping my body from obscuring the projection.

You would think that tracing is just a mindless process, and so simple that a caveman could do it. But you have to discern what lines are important and what are excessive.

Why?

The projection will take the image and flatten it out. Background, foreground, subjects all become a jumbled mess of contours and details. You will lose discernment over what you’re actually tracing when you are close to the image. It’s good to hold a printed image of what you are tracing, or tape it up next to your canvas. That way, you’ll see the whole picture and if you can’t tell what it is that you are tracing, you’ll get a clue from your reference photo.

It’s good to fill in some of the shadow areas even while tracing, or you’ll have a tough time recognizing what the lines represent visually, when you shut your projector off.

It took me over an hour just to trace everything. And with that, my work only had just begun.

When you have a tracing done, you are not finished yet. Not by a long shot.

This is where your freehand drawing skills come into play. If you want an accurate sketch as a solid foundation for your portrait, you have to go back over the tracing and enhance it.

You may be able to pin-point where the eyes or mouth are on the face with the projected image, but you’ll have to actually draw their shapes in. You’ll need to take the jumbled lines representing the background and subjects and add detail to them. The projection just won’t do that for you. All it does is give you the overall composition and proportions.

You’ll also need to darken some of the lines, and leave other lines light.

That’s what I did with this picture. In addition to that, the client wanted some changes. I think I mentioned that in my previous post. He wanted he and his wife to look younger, and their sunglasses to be removed.

So, after I finished the tracing, I put in a couple hours changing their faces, using reference photos that the client supplied as a guide.

Commissioned Portrait

I also refined the details of their clothing, supplying the visual information that the projection left out. I went into the background, making sure I could identify what were the edges of hills, and what was just foliage within the hills.

I defined the edges and rock formations within the waterfall, because in the tracing, I could only make out just a couple angles and nothing more.

Commissioned Portrait

Finally, after about five hours or so, I’ve got the sketch finished!

Commissioned Portrait

The client has approved it, and now I am ready to paint. I’ll share that part of the adventure next time. ‘Til then, have a fantastic Easter/ Resurrection Sunday, and I’ll be in touch! (Here is a video I recorded where I talk about a mural that a friend and I painted that goes along with the Easter theme. Enjoy!)

Be blessed in your painting and creative ventures…

Commissioned Portrait

All the best,