I think using projectors, or scaling up from a photo using a grid, can make a picture look too detailed and even photographic. But it’s still a useful tool provided you avoid the pitfalls.

After all Vermeer is thought to use a camera obscura for his paintings, and that’s just a type of projector.

Use whatever you want to help you with the painting it is the end product that is important and if a ruler can give a straight line use a ruler.

Use whatever you want to help you with the painting it is the end product that is important and if a ruler can give a straight line use a ruler.

To some…those that know Richard Schmid, considered a master of our times…he says in “Everything I Know About Painting” and I quote-

[b]THE REALLY [I]BIG[/I] SIN[/b]

(emphasis his…)

You will know for certain that you have truly hit bottom the day you project a photo onto a canvas or paper and–dare I even say the word–trace it. I know that the very thought has probably never occurred to you, but if the temtation ever rears its ugly head, resist it to the death! Why? Because direct tracing is like cranking up a player piano and pretending that you are the one doing the playing. It is like throwing a TV dinner in the microwave and assuming you are a chef. It is painting by the numbers, but without the numbers. It is interesting how we delude ouselves–the human capacity for self-deception is amazing. You might dazzle a layman, for a while, even some of your fellow artists, but you cannot fool yourself entirely any more than you can hide from God. Of course, if you’re painting to make money, it doesn’t matter. In that case the goal is profit, not art, so anything goes, but I feel sorry for you.

Second, if you do it too much, it is likely to destroy what drawing ability you do have. Tracing seems effortless compared to freehand drawing, and it can easily become a dependent habit.

Read drawing as a discipline that must be maintained by constant practice. It is like staying in physical shape. Knowing [i]how[/i] to do it must be accompanied by actually doing it. Tracing to get the drawing reduces you to the level of a child playing with a coloring book, and it’s not as much fun as it was when you were three years old.

Of course, Richard Schmid is just a man with an opinion. Depends what your opinion of Richard Schmid is too I suppose…

just some thoughts!

As a commercial artist, I find the use of a projector to not be cheating, if it gets you painting without lamenting that your drawings aren’t good enough.
Also the underdrawing gives you a starting point. Many commercial artists use a projector to save time even though they are capabile of doing the pencil art before painting. I personally do a drawing, or sketch, and project it, so as not having to redo the drawing from scratch and losing momentum.

So those of you that use projectors…are you tracing your own artwork or someone else’s image?

I use charcoal transfer. That is, I sketch my composition in a sketchbook on lightweight paper. The sketch is done freehand and scaled to size freehand, from a reference photo or my imagination. Then I cover the back of the sheet with charcoal, rub it in with a sponge so there are no white spots, and shake to remove dust, then I tape it with masking tape to the support (canvas or hardboard, paper, etc…). Then I go over the lines with a sharp pencil, remove the sketchpaper, and tada! Perfect replication of my freehand sketch. Then I spray a little fixative, let it dry, and get to the painting or inkwork part of the process.

Transfering an image by hand of your own original sketches is to me the only honorable way. And by honor I mean “not cheating by misrepresenting your skills”. I don’t think using a projector to transfer your own hand-drawn sketches is very much different than a charcoal transfer is it? But if you are tracing someone else’s photo, artwork, or sketch…that is just cheating by stealing someone else’s art and passing it off as your own, or by misrepresenting your skill by tracing a reference photo, in my opinion.

I don’t have a projector, but sometimes wish that I had. The grid system (which I have used for really complex subjects where proportion is extremely important to the finished piece) is so time consuming; alternatively, when I draw freehand and then start to paint there have been times when I wiped out my starting composition two and three times, just because I wasn’t happy with the placement on the canvas, or I might spent a great deal of time moving and resizing objects once the painting is underway just because they are a little off.

Now if I do take the time, I am excellent at drawing and can usually (always?) achieve the image I want, but a projector does seem like it would be a convenience, and doesn’t diminish the skill involved in going from the underpinning (drawing or sketch) to the finished painted surface, IMHO.

Are you talking about using the projector to scale up in size your smaller original sketch? Is that why you use a grid? I would use a projector instead of a grid for that, if I had a projector. I hate grids, so boring and tedious. I had to use them when I was learning to draw. Unfun. I haven’t worked in large enough format to need a projector yet, but I would definately not grid. Did I mention I hate grids?

So I thought some more about this thread after my inital post in it, and debated it with my husband, and I expand on my previous feelings…

It’s basically my opinion, that if you start with an original sketch, however you get that to your main support so you can paint or ink is just part of the artist’s toolset.

There is some consideration of course for the use of stock photos that are licensed as restriction free, and projecting those onto a support and tracing them. That is basically collaboration between the artist and stockist. Or tracing from your own photos. As long as the artist doesn’t misrepresent herself to the collector, as having drawn that freehand from a reference or from life. But that’s just my moral opinion. Everyone has different morals, and I would never impose mine on someone else.

So for leschi’s case for example, if she is just painting for fun, and tracing stock photos, and not trying to sell them to a serious collector without informing them of her methods first, I think it’s fine if she wants to skip the drawing part. Because like I said, it’s actually just collaboration with the stockist, and she’s doing her part.

I myself have a stock account where I paint acrylic abstracts and let other people use them as textures for their digital work, restriction-free, so I can speak from the viewpoint of a stockist as well as an artist.